The world’s highly skilled immigrants are increasingly living in just four nations: the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia, according to new World Bank research highlighting the challenges of brain drain for non-English-speaking and developing countries.
Falling transport costs combined with growing competition for talented workers have seen the ranks of highly skilled immigrant workers living in a group of mostly advanced nations (members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) swell 130% to 28 million over the two decades to 2010, with the number from non-OECD (typically poorer) countries surging 185% to 17.6 million.
The rise has come despite a dramatic fall in the cost of communication, suggesting the salience of other factors such as wage and cultural differences, the demands of multinational companies or the appeal of living close to other talented workers.
“The weight of the evidence points to high-skilled immigrants boosting innovation and productivity—mainly through the increased quantity of skilled individuals pursuing innovative work,” the authors said.
“The high-skilled members of the next generation appear to be less tied to any particular location or national identity, but instead have mentalities and connections that are much more global in nature,” they added, noting a remarkable surge in migration of high-skilled women. The number of highly skilled female immigrants in the OECD rose 150% to 14.4 million between 1990 and 2010. “Africa and Asia experienced the largest growth of high-skilled female emigration, indicating the potential role of gender inequalities and labor market challenges in origin countries as push factors,” the study said.
“Losing highly educated, open-minded women is a problem” for these countries,” said World Bank economist Caglar Ozden, one of the authors, in an interview. “Mothers have the most impact on the development of their children, the fertility rate, the level of civility in a society.”
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