Computer Science examines the effect of immigration on wealth inequality

The recent surge in economic inequality, together with current immigration pressures, are among the most distressing social and economic issues of our times.

In a recently published paper 'To what extent does immigration affect inequality?' (Physica A 2016 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physa.2016.06.074) written by Tomaso Aste, Professor of Complexity Science and Head of UCL's Financial Computing & Analytics Research Group, with Yonatan Berman of Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, the links between these two phenomena are investigated, and highlights that immigration does not have a major impact on inequality.

In a separate note (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2803317) the contribution from EU immigration in the last 25 years to UK economic inequality was quantified showing that this effect is less than 10%, and less than 5% comes from EU8+EU2 (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia).