Brain drain, which is the act of having highly skilled and educated people leaving their country to work abroad, has become one of concerns of the developing countries. It is also referred to as human capital flight. It is the departure of educated or professional people from one country, economic sector, or field for another, usually for better pay or living conditions. This phenomenon was first noticed around the 1960s and has been a debatable issue ever since.
Many engineers, doctors, scientists, physicians, and other professionals who come from developing countries (sovereign states with a less developed industrial base and a lower Human Development Index (HDI) relative to other countries) immigrate to Canada, the United States of America, and Western Europe.
This makes it very difficult for a developing country to develop in such circumstances as a substantial quantity of adept individuals leave the country. It is like a cycle of letting go of the finest employees.
Since there is a lack of structured statistics about international migrants, estimates are generated by using a variety of sources, for the countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is an intergovernmental organisation with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and world trade.
It is a forum whose member countries describe themselves as committed to democracy and the market economy, providing a platform to compare policy experiences, seek answers to common problems, identify good practices, and coordinate domestic and international policies of its members. Migration to the United States accounts for 54.3 percent of the total migration from developing countries to all OECD countries.
They are much more tentative for the brain drain to all OECD countries.
All foreign-born individuals in the census are put into one of three broad educational categories: primary (0 to 8 years of schooling), secondary (9 to 12 years of schooling), and tertiary (more than 12 years of schooling).
Among the countries in Asia and the Pacific, the biggest source is the Philippines, with 730,000 migrants. Of these, the great majority have a tertiary education. The second largest stock of migrants is from China (400,000), which is split almost equally between the secondary and tertiary educational groups. Both India and Korea have seen more than 300,000 people migrate to the United States. It is striking that more than 75 percent of Indian immigrants have a tertiary education, compared with only 53 percent of Korean immigrants.
For most countries, people with a tertiary education have the highest migration rate, with the exceptions of the Central American countries, Ecuador, and Thailand (in Thailand, people with a secondary education and those with a tertiary one have approximately the same migration rates).
More research is required to precisely construct the impact brain drain has had. It not only affects in country from where the immigrants flew but it also affects the country where the brain gain takes place.
Consider medical professionals in developing nations who migrate to different parts of the world for better work opportunities. There may not be enough (qualified) people to replace them when they leave, which affects the quality of health care for those left behind.
Even the economic growth of the left-behind country suffers.
Some measures to reduce brain drain include:-
- Creating a Favorable Environment
- Investing in Education
- Improving Working Conditions
Developing countries need to come up with certain strategies and implement them generously to secure their future to survive in the world.