Myths about Brain Drain

Emigration of high-skilled workers is often referred to as “brain drain,” implying a negative impact on developing countries. Others have argued for the opposite, using words such as “brain gain.” In a new working paper, John Gibson and David McKenzie shed light on eight common concerns about brain drain. The rates for brain drain, they say, aren’t skyrocketing. Actually, they may have fallen during the past decade.

Africa is not the most-affected region for brain drain; small island states are. Most skilled migrants are not doctors, but neither are they taxi drivers. High-skilled migrants typically use their skills and enjoy massive increases in their living standards as a result of migrating. In addition, the rise in skilled migration does not appear to be crowding out migration opportunities for unskilled migrants. Instead, flows of skilled and unskilled migration go together. Skilled migrants are remitting back about as much as the fiscal cost of their absence. Existing estimates of the production spillovers to other workers of brain drain are quite small. As a result, it is hard to make an empirical case that brain drain is hurting many countries.