International Migration, Remittances, and the Brain Drain : A Study of 24 Labor-Exporting Countries
While the level of international migration and remittances continues to grow, data on international migration remains unreliable. At the international level, there is no consistent set of statistics on the number or skill characteristics of...
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2003/06/2390972/international-migration-remittances-brain-drain-study-24-labor-exporting-countries http://hdl.handle.net/10986/18161 |
| Summary: | While the level of international
migration and remittances continues to grow, data on
international migration remains unreliable. At the
international level, there is no consistent set of
statistics on the number or skill characteristics of
international migrants. At the national level, most
labor-exporting countries do not collect data on their
migrants. Adams tries to overcome these problems by
constructing a new data set of 24 large, labor-exporting
countries and using estimates of migration and educational
attainment based on United States and OECD records. He uses
these new data to address the key policy question: How
pervasive is the brain drain from labor-exporting countries?
Three basic findings emerge: With respect to legal
migration, international migration involves the movement of
the educated. The vast majority of migrants to both the
United States and the OECD have a secondary (high school)
education or higher. While migrants are well-educated,
international migration does not tend to take a very high
proportion of the best educated. For 22 of the 33 countries
in which educational attainment data can be estimated, less
than 10 percent of the best educated (tertiary-educated)
population of labor-exporting countries has migrated. For a
handful of labor-exporting countries, international
migration does cause brain drain. For example, for the five
Latin American countries (Dominican Republic, El Salvador,
Guatemala, Jamaica and Mexico) located closest to the United
States, migration takes a large share of the best educated.
This finding suggests that more work needs to be done on the
relationship between brain drain, geographical proximity to
labor-receiving countries, and the size of the (educated)
population of labor-exporting countries. |
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