Introduction

Over the course of the last decade, as part of a broader globalization trend, migration and international mobility at world level have been increasing. As evidenced by Arslan et al. (2014), the number of migrants (aged 15+) in OECD countries increased by 38% between 2000 and 2010, to 106 million. Of these, about 35 million have tertiary education: a number that has increased by 70% over the past decade. As evidenced in previous chapters of this manual, mobility of the highly educated¹ is not to be seen necessarily as a negative evolution (see Flanagan, Chapter 17 and Florida and Mellander, Chapter 15 in this volume). Several authors (Ackers 2008; Mahroum 2000) have highlighted the positive effects that mobility of researchers has on innovation and the circulation of ideas. This has been identified by the literature as (positive) “brain circulation” (Saxenian 2005). We can speak of “brain drain,” on the other hand, when individuals with key skills and capacities leave a country and stop contributing to its development.

Even in the era of large detailed datasets, precisely measuring brain drain remains a daunting task. First, whereas it is possible to broadly measure the flows of highly educated individuals, tracking whether they return to their home countries at a later stage, bringing with them new skills and know-how, is still not possible on a large scale. Second, even were they not to return, in certain contexts, it is still possible that high-skilled emigrants retain ties and collaborations with their mother country. In such a way, the flow of knowledge would be ensured and we could not properly speak of a brain drain. Third, identifying the “home” country might not be as straightforward as one would think, as increasingly students spend parts of their early stages of education in different countries. Finally, as evidenced by Flanagan (this volume, Chapter 17), measuring quantity (as in the flow of researchers, scientists, or highly educated individuals) might conceal important differences in quality of migration. With no pretence to address all these issues, in this chapter I will aim to give a sense of migration flows in selected (mostly OECD) countries, largely building on proxy measures of “brain drain.” In doing so, I will build largely on the latest release² of the OECD/UN Database of Immigrants in OECD countries (DIOC) which contains detailed stock data on migration, broken down by country of birth, education attainment, age, gender, duration of stay, and labor force status.³ The data was first released in 2008, based on 2000/01 data. Then updated using data from 2005/06 and the final round contains data for 2010/11. This allows estimating flows of migrants over this period of time.

Brain Drain: Migration Patterns of the Highly Educated

To get a sense of migration patterns of the highly educated we begin by looking at the geographical composition of migration to OECD countries. High-skilled migration originates mostly from Asia, which represents roughly one-third of all highly educated immigrants in the OECD in 2010 (Figure 19.1). Among all countries, India takes the lion’s share with 2.2 million immigrants, followed by China (1.7m) and the Philippines (1.5m). Taken together, immigrants from these three countries represent one-fifth of all tertiary educated immigrants in OECD countries (Arslan et al. 2014). Interestingly, Europeans are also contributing highly to migration patterns worldwide.⁴

Moving on, it is interesting to see which countries are particularly successful at attracting or retaining talents. To this purpose, Figure 19.2 details the net flow (immigrants minus emigrants) of high-skilled workers for selected OECD countries in 2010, normalized by population. In the last year for which data is available, we note a few interesting patterns. First, four out of the six countries that are managing to attract and retain top talents are English-speaking countries. Second, small countries at the centre of Europe (Switzerland, Luxembourg), have a particularly positive balance adjusted by population. Following these there is, a notch behind, a group of eurozone countries. Japan, with its particularly restrictive migration policy, is not taking much advantage of the creation of a global market for talents. Diametrically opposite is instead Canada which, on the other hand, was very successful at attracting and retaining highly educated individuals throughout the 2000s.

Aside from looking at countries’ capacity to benefit from an international market for talents, it is interesting to see how effective they are at retaining highly educated people and how this has changed between 2000 and 2010. In doing so, however, we must account for the fact that education levels have been rising in time across the globe. To do this, we compute emigration rates of the highly skilled, which are constructed as the ratio of high-education emigrants over the number of people within their origin country with similar educational characteristics.⁵ This is pictured in Figure 19.3.

First of all, it must be clarified that the number of highly qualified emigrants (the numerator of the ratio) for all the selected countries was increasing over the period analyzed. As such, changes between 2000 and 2010 are to be ascribed to a difference in the growth rate of highly educated emigrants with respect to the general growth of people with tertiary education. Interestingly, most of the selected countries analyzed have experienced an increase in emigration rates between 2000 and 2010. Exceptions to this are Canada and the United Kingdom, which had already been identified as potential “brain drainers” above.

Another interesting case is Greece: between 2000 and 2008 the country experienced a boom period, with real GDP growing cumulatively by 32.9%, compared to a mere 17.6% of the EU27. This resulted in a higher growth of people with university degrees who chose to stay within the country, with respect to those that were leaving. Two other countries are worth mentioning: Portugal and Luxembourg, which saw their emigration rates almost double over the period analyzed. While these results are less surprising for the former, which experienced sluggish growth over the whole decade (8% cumulative real GDP growth in 2000–2008), the latter is worth some reflection. When combined with the information contained in Figure 19.2, we have a picture of a country that attracts many highly talented people, but also lost one in five of its highly educated population. The small size of the country, however, makes this an outlier by definition.

Looking beyond changes, also levels are of interest. In line with the findings of Arslan et al. (2014) at global level, within the OECD small countries are those most susceptible to high emigration rates. Following these is the United Kingdom, and then a set of eurozone members. Finally, in the tail of the distribution, we find the United States and Japan, which have very small (and invariant) emigration rates of the highly qualified. Both China and India are relatively low in the distribution, suggesting that their dominance of the immigration stock in OECD countries is mostly due to their sheer size, rather than to a substantial loss of talent.

Clearly, as outlined in the introduction, it is not only the quantity that matters, but also the quality. It could be that India is “only” seeing 3% of its highly educated leave the country, but these could (and, to a certain extent, are actually likely to) be the top 3%. In order to get a sense of this, we would need a measure of “quality” of those leaving the country. To proxy for this, we build on another OECD dataset, namely the Science, Technology, and Innovation Scoreboard 2013. Figure 19.4 illustrates a normalized measure of the impact factor⁶ of scientists who left a specific country over the period 1996–2011, and compares it to those who moved to the same country. Light and dark grey indicate whether a country was a net receiver or loser of scientists over the period analyzed, while the size of the bubbles is proportional to the sum of inflows and outflows.⁷

Ideally, a country should want to be below or on the 45-degree line, indicating that the quality of the newcomers is just as high (or higher) as that of the leavers. Conditional on this, a country should also prefer a larger rather than smaller bubble, representing a sizeable flow of scientists and indicating a full exploitation of synergies gained from international cooperation. Finally, countries should aim to land in the top-right quadrant, indicating higher quality of both incoming and outgoing researchers.

Over the long-term period analyzed, we see that India, China, Korea, Greece, and Italy were faring relatively poorly, trading high-quality scientists with lower-quality ones. Italy and India were even in the negative mark area, indicating the number of those leaving was higher than those coming. Spain and the United Kingdom were placed relatively well in terms of quality, although the latter was strongly in the red.⁸ The United States confirms itself as the greatest winner from the international market for scientists.

Aside from considerations of quality, this bubble chart also makes it immediately evident that few players alone dictate the direction of flows on a global scale. In particular, of the 33 countries analyzed by the OECD,⁹ the United States and United Kingdom combined represented more than a third (34.8%) of total outflows and 38.0% of total inflows. By contrast, these values were merely 8.0% and 7.0% for China and India combined.

Recent Trends

As highlighted above, detailed standardized data on migration is highly cumbersome to generate. As such, the latest data available is from over four years ago. Although in normal times this would not be a problem, given that migration patterns tend to be relatively stable in time, at the current juncture 2010 sounds like a remote past. The financial crisis, followed by the eurozone crisis, with its disruptive effects on the labor market and growth rates in several countries, is likely to have acted as a structural change also in terms of migration patterns. To get a sense of this effect, I compare data from the 2005 update of the DIOC with 2010 figures, and look at highly educated recent migrants,¹⁰ to obtain a proxy of the direction of change in the flows. This data is illustrated in Table 19.1.

As can be seen, the Great Recession had a disruptive impact on trade flows of the highly qualified, as growth rates in the league of advanced economies plummeted into the red. However, a small league of nations benefited from this situation. This includes Norway, which jumped from 4000 highly qualified recent immigrants in 2005 to a whopping 38,000 just five years later. Similarly, Belgium, Finland, and the United Kingdpm, together with Austria and Australia, saw an increase in the share of highly qualified migrants¹¹ in the early stages of the crisis. On the other side of the distribution, Spain was the country where high-skilled migration dropped substantially as the economy stalled.

As most countries return to growth, it will be interesting in the years to come to observe whether these changes in migration patterns will prove temporary in nature or more permanent. This will likely depend also on demographic factors, together with the growth prospects of Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The changes detailed above are likely to prove more permanent in particular for EU (and eurozone) countries, which have undergone a double-dip recession and are currently forecast to experience a protracted period of subdued growth. Moreover, in an effort to consolidate their public finances, several European governments have gone through a sharp and protracted period of “austerity.” This is likely to have an effect on their capacity to attract and retain highly skilled workers going forward, an issue we now turn to before offering some concluding remarks.

Austerity and Brain Drain in the EU

For Europe, more than for any other area in the world, looking at 2010 data might be particularly outdated. As detailed hitherto, the continent has been broadly capable (with certain exceptions) to attract highly qualified individuals over the past decades. Not only are flows of highly educated positive for most EU countries, but also the quality of incoming scientists detailed in Figure 19.4 is quite high by global standards. With the financial and sovereign-debt crisis, however, unemployment rates have soared in several countries, and have now broadly stabilized at high levels. As job prospects for newcomers become grimmer, one can expect Europe’s capacity to attract talented individuals to be negatively affected.

Moreover, within the EU itself there are large differences. Veugelers (2014) shows how fiscal consolidation has led countries that were already “innovation laggards” within the EU to cut disproportionately their Research and Innovation (R&I) expenditure with respect to other categories of public expenditure. Lower private and public spending on research is likely to have a significant impact on the capacity of countries to attract and retain talents in the longer term. With no pretence to trace a direct causality link, Figure 19.5 illustrates the strong correlation between percentage changes (approximated by the log function) in highly skilled migration flows and percentage changes in R&D expenditure (both public and private).

Survey evidence corroborates this hypothesis even when looking more specifically at researchers. The 2012 MORE2 survey on mobility patterns of researchers asks respondents, among other things, the reasons for moving in their post-PhD career. Figure 19.6 illustrates the main motives for moving to another EU country (left-hand side) or leaving the EU altogether (right-hand side). Career progression, research funding, facilities, and equipment (all of which are likely to be highly associated with R&D spending) appear among the top reasons for moving. This seems to be broadly corroborated also by the literature, as discussed in detail by Flanagan (this volume, Chapter 17).

A country that gives a high priority to R&D is one that is likely to generate growth in innovative sectors over the medium to long term (see Veugelers 2014). This is true both for the public sector (within universities’ fields of research) and the private sector (in innovative business sectors). In turn, an economy where growth originates from innovative sectors is well placed to attract talents from abroad or create jobs for the highly qualified individuals it has trained. As such, we can expect that countries in the EU periphery where economic performance is sluggish and R&D spending has been slashed will see a higher incidence of brain drain in the years to come. Veugelers (2014) identifies these as Ireland, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Greece.

It goes without saying that the impact of R&D spending on innovation, migration patterns, research facilities, and wages is likely to manifest only over long periods of time. As such, our analysis traces the likely scenario for these European countries only in the case in which the cuts to R&D are not rapidly reversed in the coming years.

Within the European context, migration, and with it therefore also “brain drain,” are somewhat more problematic concepts. This is due to the fact that, in line with its mandate to create a single market for labor, the European Commission has been encouraging the free flow of workers and researchers in the EU.¹² As such, observing highly educated individuals leave countries where growth is sluggish and opportunities limited in favor of other (more economically successful) EU members is regarded as a positive development, indicating that the single market is at work. The question remains, however, whether these individuals will then continue contributing in some way to the prosperity of their origin country, or whether the single market will rather lead to a permanent and widening gap in knowledge, growth, and income levels between countries. The jury is still out.

Conclusions

Identifying clear instances of “brain drain” is a complex business. Comparative cross-country datasets currently available do not allow tracking individuals in a world that is becoming increasingly globalized. Talented, highly educated individuals are those best placed to exploit the opportunities that are available to those ready to move to another country. What matters for policymakers, however, is whether the individuals who have accumulated human capital in a country end up migrating and cutting all ties with the mother land.

In this chapter, I have looked at immigration and emigration patterns for the highly qualified, trying to correct for the problems involved with this necessarily approximate approach. All in all, the picture that emerges, although with significant differences, is that advanced economies were still the prime destination for increasingly educated workers throughout the 2000s. On balance, most of the OECD countries were benefiting from a positive net inflow of highly educated workers. When looking at both quantity and quality, the United States confirms itself as the top brain-drainer worldwide. In terms of size of the phenomenon, the United States and the United Kingdom commanded together a sizeable share of total flows of scientists (36.4%), which still dwarfs the emerging Asian giants (India and China represented 7.5% of flows). As both these Asian economies hit on all cylinders, however, it is not hard to see this situation reversing over the course of the next decade.

The financial crisis worldwide, and the eurozone crisis regionally, are likely to have affected the established migration trends. As the economy of several countries took a hit, migration rates of the highly skilled dropped sharply. The key question is whether they will return to pre-crisis levels as economic growth rates return into the black.

European countries were not only affected by a protracted double-dip recession, but several of its members got also stuck in a vicious loop of low growth and fiscal austerity. As a consequence, R&D spending took a hit. In this chapter, we offer preliminary evidence suggesting that, were these cuts not to be reversed as the pressure for consolidation recedes, countries might be hampered in their capacity to attract and retain talented individuals. Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Spain, and Greece are all at risk of being the victim, rather than the beneficiary, of “brain drain.”

References

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