In our Grattan report on HELP doubtful debt, we struggled to get long-term data on graduates leaving Australia. We were interested in this issue because currently there are no provisions for recovering HELP debts from graduates living overseas.

The latest HILDA Statistical Report doesn’t report on HELP debtors, but it does include information on people with a bachelor degree or above. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they are more likely than people with other qualifications to leave Australia permanently, as seen in the figure below.

Based on general emigration data, our report assumed that graduates with personal or family links to another country would be more likely to emigrate. HILDA confirms that this is the case, with people with both parents born in a non-English speaking country having three times the emigration rate as people with both parents born in Australia. However, 87% of people with NESB parents remained.

Reflecting the general Australian population and the education focus of many migrant groups, nearly half of Australia’s domestic students in 2011 had at least one parent born overseas. While HELP debtors going overseas is a much smaller issue than the deceased estate write-off, these numbers suggest that it would be worthwhile to do more to recover HELP from overseas debtors. The Grattan doubtful debt report discusses some of the practical issues in doing so. Since the report was released, the government has said that it has had discussions with the English about mutual efforts to help collect student debt.