Brain Drain

Brain drain is a popular term describing the international migration of highly skilled professionals. Transnational relocation of the highly skilled adheres to general migration patterns, but with some differences. Highly trained migrants are attracted to fast-growing economies from slow-growing economies, from low-wage to high-wage regions, and from political instability, risk, and restriction toward more stability, security, and freedom. Skilled migrants are also drawn toward flexible markets for professional jobs and toward fertile intellectual environments. Brain drains have increased in recent years thanks to the increasing importance of the “knowledge economy” a slowdown or reversal of population growth and concomitant aging of populations around the world, and more mobile and less loyal workforces.

Originally a reference to the movement from post-World War II Europe to the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, “brain drain” has since been applied more widely to describe the phenomenon of trained professionals migrating internationally, but particularly from poorer to wealthier countries. Net recipients of a brain drain, such as the United States, are sometimes said to be experiencing a “brain gain.” Some countries having both sizable inflows and outflows, such as New Zealand (losing professionals to Australia but pulling them in from elsewhere in Asia), are regarded as experiencing a “brain exchange” The “draining [Page 177]away” of scientists, computer programmers, nurses, and other such trained professionals is compensated by the knowledge transfers and monetary remittances those professionals send back to their places of origin. The value of such offsets varies across time and place, however. They have also been difficult to measure and difficult for policy makers to agree upon.

The global extent of the brain drain is unclear. Systems for tracking the movement of skilled professionals are incomplete and inconsistent. There are also uncertainties in defining the line between professional and nonprofessional workers, and in assessing the importance of factors, other than the demand for and supply of skilled workers, that also encourage their migration. There is, however, a general consensus on two points. First, the migration of professionals is disproportionately large relative to both the flows of international migrants generally and to the numbers of stay-at-home professionals. Second, this brain drain is likely to remain significant and grow larger in the future.

Information technology and healthcare are two industries most prominently reliant on international imports of trained professionals. India and the Philippines, among many others, are important suppliers of such workers. Leading destination countries include the United States, Canada, and Australia.

Demand for skilled professionals is rooted in growing global needs for “human capital.” In 2006 The Economist reported that 70 percent of the value of companies making up the United States' “Standard & Poor's 500” was comprised of “intangible assets,” much of which derived from technology and the talents of employees. A general ongoing shortage of scientists and engineers further increases their international movement toward places and companies where they are most wanted and best rewarded. The supply of highly skilled migrants also has powerful underpinnings. Compared to other migrants, professional workers are better able to recognize and pursue opportunities abroad, and public policies of recipient countries—and sometimes sending countries as well—have tended to favor skilled over unskilled immigrants.

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