30323: Durban: re 30315 Schuller on Brain Drain Inquiry (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Lance Durban <lpdurban@yahoo.com>

Mark Schuller's inquiry (Corbett # 30315) refers to an Oct 2005 NY
Times article which highlighted a problem faced by many developing
countries.  The article itself (pasted below) doesn't say much about
Haiti per se, but it came with a neat little graph showing fully 84% of
Haiti's college graduates to be living outside of Haiti.  The second
highest number was Ghana with 47%.  There were some weaknesses in the
study which the article points out, but this problem highlighted is
nevertheless a serious one.

It's a chicken or egg question:  Which comes first?  The good jobs
needed to retain Haiti's college graduates in Haiti, or the college
graduates needed to help create those jobs.

There isn't really a correct answer, but the fact remains, that a large
percentage of Haiti's college-educated are voting with their feet.
Overlooking the questionable ethics, some developped countries (read:
Quebec, Canada) are quite willing to strip Haiti of it's most talented
sons and daughters.  At least the U.S. doesn't face that moral
blemish... au contraire, the USA gets slammed because it does NOT allow
easy entry for Haitian nationals.

Here's that NY Times article from 18 months ago.

L Durban


October 25, 2005
Study Finds Small Developing Lands Hit Hardest by 'Brain Drain'
By CELIA W. DUGGER
Poor countries across Africa, Central America and the Caribbean are
losing sometimes staggering portions of their college-educated workers
to wealthy democracies, according to a World Bank study released
yesterday.

The study's findings document a troubling pattern of ''brain drain,''
the flight of skilled middle-class workers who could help lift their
countries out of poverty, some analysts say. And while the exact
effects are still little understood, there is a growing sense among
economists that such migration plays a crucial role in a country's
development.

The findings are based on an extensive survey of census and other data
from the 30 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development, which includes most of the world's richest nations.

The study found that from a quarter to almost half of the
collegeeducated citizens of poor countries like Ghana, Mozambique,
Kenya, Uganda and El Salvador lived abroad in an O.E.C.D. country -- a
fraction that rises to more than 80 percent for Haiti and Jamaica.

In contrast, less than 5 percent of the skilled citizens of the
powerhouses of the developing world, like India, China, Indonesia and
Brazil, live abroad in an O.E.C.D. country.

These patterns suggest that an extensive flight of educated people is
damaging many small to medium-size poor countries, while the largest
developing countries are better able to weather relatively smaller
losses of talent, and even benefit from them when their skilled workers
return or invest in their native lands, said Frédéric Docquier, a lead
researcher for the bank and an economist at the University of Leuven in
Belgium.

''For a country with a third of its graduates missing, one has to
worry,'' said Alan Winters, director of the World Bank's development
research group.

The World Bank study, published yesterdayin a book, ''International
Migration, Remittances and the Brain Drain,'' also presents an analysis
of the effect of the money that migrants from Guatemala, Mexico and the
Philippines sent home, typically to their families.

Those payments, known as remittances, helped reduce poverty in those
countries and were a major source of foreign exchange, but the broader
implications were complex.

In Guatemala, for example, rural families receiving the money spent
more on education and less on consumption. But in Mexico, children in
migrant families actually got less education than those of nonmigrants,
possibly because their families believed that they would eventually
migrate to the United States for unskilled jobs that did not reward
higher levels of learning.

Some of the bank's data on brain drain have brought debate. Mark
Rosenzweig, a Yale University economist, argues that the bank's
measurement is inflated because it does not exclude immigrants who
moved to a rich country as children, or who got their college
educations there.

Survey data on immigrants from Jamaica, for example, show that almost 4
of 10 came to the United States before the age of 20, he said.

Bank researchers say they are now gathering such information, though it
is not available for many countries, and acknowledge that it would be
useful to know where migrants were educated. But they and some experts
outside the bank say its latest report still offers the most
comprehensive sense yet of the magnitude of the brain drain from poor
countries, though that knowledge is admittedly rough and incomplete.

Most experts agree that the exodus of skilled workers from poor
countries is a symptom of deep economic, social and political problems
in their homelands and can prove particularly crippling in much needed
professions in health care and education.

Jagdish Bhagwati, an economist at Columbia University who migrated from
India in the late 1960's, said immigrants were often voting with their
feet when they departed from countries that were badly run and
economically dysfunctional. They get their government's attention by
the act of leaving.

''If you stay you don't have any bargaining power at all,'' he said.

But some scholars are asking whether the brain drain may also fuel a
vicious downward cycle of underdevelopment -- and cost poor countries
the feisty people with the spark and the ability to resist corruption
and incompetent governance.

Devesh Kapur and John McHale argue in their book, ''Give Us Your Best
and Brightest,'' published last week by the Center for Global
Development, a research group in Washington, that the loss of
institution builders -- hospital managers, university department heads
and political reformers, among others -- can help trap countries in
poverty.

''It's not just the loss of professionals,'' said Mr. Kapur, an
associate professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin.
''It's also the loss of a middle class.''

The question of what can be done to lessen the damage is vexing and
gets into difficult questions of whether to limit the migration of
skilled workers. The immigration policies of rich nations, including
the United States, Canada, Britain and Australia, have sought to
attract highly educated professionals, to bolster their competitiveness
and to fill gaps in domestic skills.

Many experts say they oppose efforts to curtail the movement of
migrants, but they are debating possible ways to help poor countries
cope. An idea that Professor Bhagwati first proposed in the 1970's --
that developing countries should tax their expatriate workers -- is
getting a fresh look.

Editors of the World Bank's book say policies may be needed to raise
the incomes of professionals in their home countries.

Others, including Professor Kapur and Professor McHale, who is an
economist at the business school of Queen's University in Kingston,
Ontario, suggest that new ways be found to compensate the hardest-hit
countries for their losses. They also say rich countries should
consider setting up time-limited visas that would allow professionals
to work for a few years before taking their expertise, and savings,
back home.

Professor Kapur likened a skilled immigrant's getting a visa to work in
a rich country to winning a lottery, because the income gains from
moving are so great. Whatever the approach, he said, the benefits to
the few who are lucky enough to leave need to be weighed against the
costs to their countrymen left behind.