International Migration, Remittances, and the Brain Drain

By Caglar Ozden, Maurice Schiff. 2005

798 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Knowledge of the economic effects of migration, especially its impact on economic development, is rather limited. In order to expand knowledge on migration, and identify policies and reforms that would lead to superior development outcomes, this volume presents the results of a first set of studies carried out on the subject. Current demographic trends in both developed and developing countries are pointing toward significant, potential economic gains from migration. The labor forces in many developed countries are expected to peak around 2010, and decline by around 5 percent in the following two decades, accompanied by a rapid increase in dependency ratios. Conversely, the labor forces in many developing countries are expanding rapidly, resulting in declines in dependency ratios. This imbalance is likely to create strong demand for workers in developed countries' labor markets, especially for numerous service sectors that can only be supplied locally. There are large north-south wage gaps, however, especially for unskilled and semiskilled labor. Part 1 of this book, Migration and Remittances, examines the determinants of migration, and the impact of migration and remittances on various development indicators, and measures of welfare. Among these are poverty and inequality; investments in education, health, housing and other productive activities; entrepreneurship; and child labor and education. It focuses on different source countries, use data collected via different methodologies, and employ different econometric tools. Their results, however, are surprisingly consistent. Part 2, Brain Drain, Brain Gain, Brain Waste, focuses on issues related to the migration of skilled workers, that is, the brain drain. It presents the most extensive database on bilateral skilled migration to date, and also examines a number of issues associated with the brain drain, that have not been emphasized in the literature so far, uncovers a number of interesting and unexpected patterns, and, provides answers to some of the debates. This volume deals essentially with economically motivated south-north migration, whose principal cause is, in most cases, the difference in (the present value of) expected real wages, adjusted for migration costs.

Subfields: Sociology and Political Science

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Citations in the corpus

The human resource challenge to outward foreign direct investment aspirations from emerging economies: the case of China (2007, background): “Besides QOL and children’s education issues, the interviews yielded a disturbing phenomenon: ‘brain waste’, which refers to a situation where over-qualified immigrants worked in jobs that did not require advanced education and qualifications, thus ‘wasting’ their skills and talents (Ozden and Schiff”
A Gendered Assessment of Highly Skilled Emigration (2009, methodology): “Adams (2003) used the same technique to compile estimates for 24 countries in 2000.”
Research on Globalization and Education (2008, background): “For instance, what is the long-term effect of the fact that “many Central American and island nations in the Caribbean had more that 50 percent of their university-educated citizens living abroad in 2000” (Ozden & Schiff, 2006, p. 11).”
Brain Drain in Developing Countries (2007, methodology): “11 Adams (2003) used the same methodology to compute brain drain rates from 24 countries in 2000.”
Migration in an Enlarged EU: A Challenging Solution? (2009, methodology): “…on data from Eurostat online database for Population and Social Conditions / Labour Market / Employment and unemployment (Labour Force Survey) available at: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page?_pageid=1090,30070682,1090_30298591&_dad=portal&_ schema=PORTAL Notes: In percent, 2003Q1-2008Q1.”
Does Higher Education Attained Abroad Lead to International Jobs? (2008, background): “This is probably more likely to happen if the labour market options and general living conditions are better in the host country than the home country, and countries such as China and India are examples of countries that suffer from substantial “brain drain” (Özden & Schiff, 2006).”
Diaspora Networks and the International Migration of Skills: How Countries Can Draw on their Talent Abroad (2006, background): “…university-educated expatriates in high-income economies (1,126,260 people), followed by India (1,037,626), Mexico (922,964), and China (816,824) (Ozden and Schiff 2005, p.170).2 Second, it assumes that the skilled expatriates could be a significant resource for the development of their home…”