International Migration, Remittances, and the Brain Drain : A Study of 24 Labor-Exporting Countries

Adams, Richard H. Jr.

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: AGED;    ANNUAL REPORT;    BORDERS;    BRAIN DRAIN;    CENSUS BUREAU;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-3069
RP-ID  :  WPS3069

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

While the level of internationalmigration and remittances continues to grow, data oninternational migration remains unreliable. At theinternational level, there is no consistent set ofstatistics on the number or skill characteristics ofinternational migrants. At the national level, mostlabor-exporting countries do not collect data on theirmigrants. Adams tries to overcome these problems byconstructing a new data set of 24 large, labor-exportingcountries and using estimates of migration and educationalattainment based on United States and OECD records. He usesthese new data to address the key policy question: Howpervasive is the brain drain from labor-exporting countries?Three basic findings emerge: With respect to legalmigration, international migration involves the movement ofthe educated. The vast majority of migrants to both theUnited 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 highproportion of the best educated. For 22 of the 33 countriesin which educational attainment data can be estimated, lessthan 10 percent of the best educated (tertiary-educated)population of labor-exporting countries has migrated. For ahandful of labor-exporting countries, internationalmigration does cause brain drain. For example, for the fiveLatin American countries (Dominican Republic, El Salvador,Guatemala, Jamaica and Mexico) located closest to the UnitedStates, migration takes a large share of the best educated.This finding suggests that more work needs to be done on therelationship between brain drain, geographical proximity tolabor-receiving countries, and the size of the (educated)population of labor-exporting countries.