Brain Drain vs Brain Gain: Striking a Balance

Two years ago, I moved to the UK to pursue a master’s degree and work. However, the desire to return to India has not faded. This internal conflict sparked the blog post on individuals like me and conversely, those who have found a home abroad, in search of better socio-economic opportunities, a broader phenomenon named brain drain. As its positive counterpart brain gain is often overlooked, this post attempts to tally brain drain and brain gain, to see which side tips the scale.

Why are certain countries rich and others poor? While there is no single answer, brain drain could play a role. Developing countries constitute almost 80% of outbound migration.  Poorer and war-torn countries such as Jamaica and Haiti observe 80% of their highly educated workforce moving abroad while Afghanistan, Cambodia and Sub-Saharan African nations lose one-third to half of their college graduates. These figures may even increase as climate change rears its ugly head, forcing migration from the most vulnerable regions.

What does this mean for countries grappling with emigration? Besides the pronounced loss of talent and productivity, the mass exodus of workers in areas such as healthcare or information technology, ill-equips developing countries to deal with health or other crises, increasing the gap between developed and developing nations. Moreover, governments see little return from subsidizing education when the beneficiaries move abroad before paying taxes in their home country. This creates a fiscal loss that could have several unintended consequences. Although the government does not function as a business, if the benefits of investment in education are reaped abroad, why would governments continue to prioritize it?

However, not all is lost. Brain drain can be reversed into a brain gain, a catalyst for development. When education is seen as a path to emigration, it can incentivize the uptake of further education. As uncertainty surrounding migration increases, more and more individuals (now college graduates) remain in their home country, increasing the buffers of skilled manpower. Considering this cohort is severely limited in developing countries, with only 1 in 10 adults having completed a higher education degree in India, it shows how brain drain can motivate competitive advantages. Moreover, the prospect of migration might induce young people to select more lucrative courses and career choices.

There are also more obvious blessings to brain drain. Remittances from highly skilled emigrants to their families and communities can help fuel the local economy and fund the human capital exhausted by the brain drain.

In more than 60 countries, remittances account for 3 percent or more of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and small/fragile states are more heavily dependent on remittances.

Secondly, diasporas can help facilitate bilateral trade, and technology exchanges between the host and home countries. The emigrants also act as cultural ambassadors fostering goodwill and soft power for the home country. Thirdly, return migration allows the sharing of benefits from emigration between the home and the host country. When emigrants return, the host country gains highly skilled temporary labour, and the home country enhances productivity and entrepreneurship, especially when taking into account the networks, knowledge, and financial capital acquired abroad.

Terms and Conditions Apply

So which prevails, brain drain or brain gain? The answer is heavily context-dependent.

Brain gain generated by inducing investment in human capital depends on the probability of immigration and the level of economic development. Probability measured by past emigration rates must be high enough to signal that emigration is possible but not too high. While development should be low enough to encourage emigration but not too low that education becomes unaffordable. In these scenarios, educational enrolments improve across the board, as seen in countries such as China, India, Brazil and other large developing nations. It is the countries with high emigration rates and low human capital like those in Sub-Saharan Africa, Central America and smaller island states where brain gain is limited.

While the net result between loss of productivity and gain in human capital remains unclear, brain drain is yet perilous for certain countries. Hence, it is essential to mitigate the adverse effects of the outflows of skilled migration. Retaining skilled persons may be the best policy option but is impossible without rapid economic growth, political stability and robust educational infrastructure. Unfortunately as Dewan and Tewari (2001) aptly state,  

the hard reality is that few emerging markets have any hope, in the foreseeable future, of creating the type and volume of economic opportunities needed to reverse or even substantially slow the brain drain.

Therefore, the return migration of skilled professionals is considered the most effective strategy to produce brain gain. Since developing countries cannot create a conducive environment for retention and return in the short to medium term and a one-way return would mean no remittances, emphasis should be placed on temporary, repeat migrations aka circular migration. Special return programmes in Korea and Taiwan successfully reversed the brain drain by focusing on businesses' return on investments (in Korea) and setting up industrial centres to establish ties with companies in the USA (in Taiwan). The promotion of diaspora networks and short-term movements led to mutually beneficial outcomes.

Although brain drain is often seen as a cause of low economic growth, if left unchecked it can trigger a vicious cycle that keeps countries poor and exacerbates the inequalities between the developing and developed countries. But brain drain does not have to be a zero-sum game. With policies that foster global collaboration, circular migration and education investment, the emigration of skilled professionals can be a force for shared prosperity. As for me, the journey mirrors the duality that is brain drain and brain gain but also portrays an opportunity to bridge both worlds.