Zusammenfassung:
With the 1967 reform, Canada's immigration policy changed from a country-preference system to a points system. The latter provides points according to applicants' education level but abstracts from the quality of their education. This paper considers the points system, the country-preference system, as well as a system that includes both educational quantity and quality and is termed the "๐2 points system." It focuses on the policies' impact on immigrants' average productive human capital ย the product of educational quality and quantity ย or skill level, ๐๐ฅ (for policy ๐ฅ). It shows, among others, that i) ๐๐ฅ is greater under the ๐2 system than under the points system (๐๐ > ๐โ); ii) a switch from a points system to a ๐2 system results in a human capital gain or net brain gain for Country 1 (the high-education quality country) and a loss or net brain drain for Country 2; iii) ๐๐ฅ is greater under the country-preference system than under the points system (๐๐ > ๐โ); iv) whether ๐๐ฅ is greater under the ๐2 or the country-preference system is ambiguous, with ๐๐ >(<) ๐๐ if the quality of education in Country 1 relative to Country 2 is higher (lower) than the degree of preference for migrants from Country 1 relative to Country 2; and v) an increase in education quality in the high- (low-) quality source country has a positive (ambiguous) impact on ๐๐ฅ under all three policies and the impact is larger under the ๐2 than under the points system.