Fears of Brain Drain Escalate

When the developed world thinks of migrants, they tend to envision low-skilled laborers who directly compete for jobs as factory workers, farmhands and servers. When people in the developing world think of migrants, they envision their most educated, successful, and driven minds leaving their home countries en masse. This brain drain of the poorest countries’ most skilled reflects the other, less-known side of immigration and poses urgent challenges for the developing world. According to Frédéric Docquier of the Institute for the Study of Labor, the increasing rate of skilled emigration from the poorest and most conflict-torn nations of the world poses the question of whether this migration creates a brain drain or gain.

A number of studies track the trend of international migration to the developed world. Docquier shows that over the past decade, the number of highly skilled immigrants moving into OECD countries increased over 60 percent, compared to a 14 percent increase in unskilled immigrants moving to those countries. A graph by the Economist shows that developing countries possess a higher percentage of patents filed by emigrants than locals.

The cause of this drain is not simple or singular. The push-factors toward developed nations consist primarily of a combination of economic opportunity and social or political instability. Wealthier nations pay substantially higher wages, have higher standards of living, and provide better economic opportunities. The social turmoil, war, and fraught political transitions that occur more frequently in poorer nations result in unfavorable living conditions. Facilitated by the ease of transportation allowed by increasing globalization, migrants today have both the means and motive to move across the globe in search of opportunity.

By removing critical human resources from developing countries, brain drain directly constrains poor countries’ development. The Institute for the Study of Labor explains that there are clear fiscal impacts of brain drain. First, the origin country loses the technological and social influence of the educated emigrants. Second, since education is partially or completely subsidized by the government, and migrants do not pay taxes in their home country after departing, home countries face a direct fiscal loss for every lost emigrant. Finally, brain drain increases the technological gap between the developed and developing world due to the forfeiture of key innovators and engineers to advanced economies.  

However, the issue runs deeper. Several economists argue that the simplistic brain-drain hypothesis fails to account for the profound effects of remittances, sums of money sent home to family in the origin country, the benefits of migrants who eventually return, and the increased levels of local education driven by the opportunity to migrate. In fact, when these economists account for these factors, the mass exodus of highly skilled migrants could turn a net benefit for their origin countries, known as a brain gain.

The clearest way that migrants repay their homelands is through remittances. According to the World Bank, in 2016, workers from developing countries sent an estimated total of $442 billion home. In Lebanon, Lesotho, Nepal, Tajikistan and a number of other places, remittances are more than 20 percent of GDP. A study of Ghanaian migrants found that once their remittances are taken into account, the cost of their local subsidized education would have to be 5.6 times the official figure to make it a losing proposition for Ghana.

Furthermore, the migrant exodus may benefit developing countries in other subtle ways. When migrants return to their home nations, they are often either more effective in their old professions or start new businesses that stimulate economic development. In addition, some emigrants would have been unemployed in their home country, a burden on the nation’s social security net. Migration leads to a more efficient pairing of skills and jobs, thus recycling initially unproductive resources.

The possibility of emigration gives people who stay home an incentive to invest in education. A case study of Cape Verdeans found that an increase in young people's perceived probability of emigrating by ten percent raises the probability of their completing secondary school by about eight percent. Since a fraction of those educated remain at home, the skill levels of the home population rise.

Summarizing the case for “brain gain,” Ian Goldin of the University of Oxford explains that if advanced countries admitted three percent more skilled migrants, the world would be $356 billion wealthier per year. This evidence supports the argument that migration is an effective tool to reduce global poverty; however, economic gain is not the only pertinent dimension of brain drain.

The loss of workers in critical, irreplaceable roles in health care, infrastructure, and other sectors lays bare the dire impact of a shortage of labor. According to Elvira Nica of the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, the increasing brain drain of health professionals and engineers in disproportionately large numbers undermines the origin country’s ability to deal with health crises, prevents it from effectively adopting new technologies, and weakens the state’s ability to maintain and develop the nation.

When countries suffer economic, health, and socio-political disasters, “brain drain” compounds the crisis, leading to a cycle of misfortune and mass departure. In Sub-Saharan Africa, large parts of the region have effectively no health care at all, with only 600,000 healthcare professionals for a population of 682 million.

Brain drain or gain is neither unequivocally positive or negative but contains an inherent tension between the economic benefits and the deep structural issues created. To reconcile this conflict, countries should avoid taking extreme action such as restricting movement entirely or leaving it to chance.

Instead, nations should allow the free movement of certain classes of migrants, such as students and technological professionals, and structurally incentivize the retention of others, including engineers and healthcare professionals through legal and fiscal means. In doing so, the developed and the developing world can together reap the benefits that migration has to offer.

Abhinav is a freshman in the School of Foreign Service from San Jose, California. He spends an unwarranted amount of time researching obscure philosophy, while shirking his actual, relevant work.