Measuring the International Mobility of Skilled Workers (1990-2000): Release 1.0
Until recently, there has been no systematic empirical assessment of the economic impact of the brain drain. Despite many case studies and anecdotal evidence, the main reason for this seems to be the lack of harmonized international data on migrati...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, D.C.
2013
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2004/08/5141822/measuring-international-mobility-skilled-workers-1990-2000-release-10 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/14126 |
| Summary: | Until recently, there has been no
systematic empirical assessment of the economic impact of
the brain drain. Despite many case studies and anecdotal
evidence, the main reason for this seems to be the lack of
harmonized international data on migration by country of
origin and education level. An exception is the paper by
Carrington and Detragiache (1998), which provided skilled
migration rates for 61 developing countries in 1990. This
study relies on a set of tentative assumptions. For example,
they transpose the skill structure of U.S. immigrants on the
OECD total immigration stock. In this paper, the authors
provide new estimates of skilled workers' emigration
rates for about 190 countries in 2000 and 170 countries in
1990, in both developing and industrial countries. Using
various statistical sources, they revisit Carrington and
Detragiache's measures by incorporating information on
immigrants' educational attainment and country of
origin from almost all OECD countries. The set of receiving
countries is restricted to OECD nations. The authors'
database covers 92.7 percent of the OECD immigration stock.
In absolute terms, the authors show that the largest numbers
of highly educated migrants are from Europe, Southern and
Eastern Asia, and, to a lesser extent, from Central America.
Nevertheless, as a proportion of the potential educated
labor force, the highest brain drain rates are observed in
the Caribbean, Central America, and Western and Eastern
Africa. Repeating the exercise for 1990 and 2000 allows the
authors to evaluate the changes in brain drain intensity.
Western Africa, Eastern Africa, and Central America
experienced a remarkable increase in the brain drain during
the past decade. The database delivers information that is
rich enough to assess the changes in the international
distribution of migration rates, to test for the (push and
pull) determinants per skill group, to evaluate the growth
effects of migration on source and destination countries,
and to estimate the relationships between migration, trade,
foreign research and development, and remittances. |
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