Objectives
News 
Global Mobility of the Highly Skilled
Carmen Munteanu - Communications Coordinator
6 November 2013
The paper “A Global Assessment of Human Capital Mobility: the Role of non-OCDE Destinations”, published by the International Migration Institute, proposes a global analysis of human capital mobility.
The movement of highly skilled people is one of the most topical aspects of international migration. Governments of more developed countries are implementing policies to attract highly qualified work force, to the deep concern of the home countries who face difficulties in retaining their citizens. On the long term the labour force exodus negatively impacts upon the economic and political conditions in the countries of origin. The authors draw attention that researchers are mainly focused on the labour force transfer to OECD countries, neglecting the transfer of human capital from poorer countries to emerging non-OECD economies (such as South Africa, Gulf countries, Singapore, Hong Kong).
What is relevant for the economic development is the loss or gain of human capital, which should consider the characteristics of emigrant and immigrant workers. However such assessments are very difficult to make. An option would be to record for instance the occupation and educational level of the labour force who left the country and of immigrant workers. This would give a time variation of human capital of a country, which could be anchored in a determined context, for instance by census. A second option would be to collect available data at a given time for all countries, which would facilitate a comparison between leavers and comers. Such data can be realistically collected with the occasion of censuses, performed on average every 10 years. However unfortunately only Canada, Australia and New Zealand record data on the qualifications of emigrant workers. The net human capital of a country measures the characteristics of the incoming and outgoing labour force.
The authors' conclusion was that emigration to non-OECD countries stands for 1/3 of the total brain drain globally. In general high-income and OECD countries exhibit negative net brain drain rates, indicating that highly skilled immigrants more than compensate for the emigrating labour force.
The paper “A Global Assessment of Human Capital Mobility: the Role of non-OCDE Destinations” - Christopher Parson, Erhan Artuç, Frédéric Docquier şi Çağlar Özden can be consulted at http://www.imi.ox.ac.uk/publications/imi-working-papers/wp-75-2013.
Source: http://blog.qeh.ox.ac.uk/?p=504&fb_source=message
The movement of highly skilled people is one of the most topical aspects of international migration. Governments of more developed countries are implementing policies to attract highly qualified work force, to the deep concern of the home countries who face difficulties in retaining their citizens. On the long term the labour force exodus negatively impacts upon the economic and political conditions in the countries of origin. The authors draw attention that researchers are mainly focused on the labour force transfer to OECD countries, neglecting the transfer of human capital from poorer countries to emerging non-OECD economies (such as South Africa, Gulf countries, Singapore, Hong Kong).
What is relevant for the economic development is the loss or gain of human capital, which should consider the characteristics of emigrant and immigrant workers. However such assessments are very difficult to make. An option would be to record for instance the occupation and educational level of the labour force who left the country and of immigrant workers. This would give a time variation of human capital of a country, which could be anchored in a determined context, for instance by census. A second option would be to collect available data at a given time for all countries, which would facilitate a comparison between leavers and comers. Such data can be realistically collected with the occasion of censuses, performed on average every 10 years. However unfortunately only Canada, Australia and New Zealand record data on the qualifications of emigrant workers. The net human capital of a country measures the characteristics of the incoming and outgoing labour force.
The authors' conclusion was that emigration to non-OECD countries stands for 1/3 of the total brain drain globally. In general high-income and OECD countries exhibit negative net brain drain rates, indicating that highly skilled immigrants more than compensate for the emigrating labour force.
The paper “A Global Assessment of Human Capital Mobility: the Role of non-OCDE Destinations” - Christopher Parson, Erhan Artuç, Frédéric Docquier şi Çağlar Özden can be consulted at http://www.imi.ox.ac.uk/publications/imi-working-papers/wp-75-2013.
Source: http://blog.qeh.ox.ac.uk/?p=504&fb_source=message
Back