Brain drain

A brain drain or human capital flight is an emigration of trained and talented individuals ("human capital") for other nations or jurisdictions, due to conflict, lack of opportunity and/or health hazards where they are living. It parallels the term "capital flight" which refers to financial capital which is no longer invested in the country where its owner lives and earned it. Investment in higher education is lost when the trained individual leaves, usually not to return. Also whatever social capital the individual has been a part of is reduced by their departure. Spokesmen for the Royal Society of London first coined the expression “brain drain” to describe the outflow of scientists and technologists to the United States and Canada in the early 1950s.

History

Historically, the greatest brain drains have been from rural to urban areas. In the 19th century and 20th century there were great migrations to North America from Europe, and in modern times, from developing nations to developed nations, especially after colonialism. Sometimes such drains occur between developed nations, e.g. from Canada to the United States especially in the finance, software, aerospace, healthcare and entertainment industries due to higher wages and lower taxes. Only in recent years this trend seems to be slowing and even reversing with many Canadians returning home to work.

Nazism and the United States Brain Gain

The rise of the Nazis led to a great number of European scientists (many of whom either Jewish or were opposed to Nazism) to flee to the United States. European scientists played a large role in the success of the Manhattan project. Enrico Fermi, Albert Einstein and many other European scientists worked on this scientific project which had been pioneered in Germany. During the immediate post-war period, Operation Paperclip was used to capture many German rocket engineers such as Wernher von Braun. Wernher von Braun and other German engineers used their research on the V-2 as a starting point for the US missile program. Without Wernher von Braun, the United States missile program would have never been able to make such significant progress. Many other German aerospace engineers used aerospace technology developed in Germany to design missiles and aircraft. As an example, the delta wing was first pioneered on the Messerschmidt Komet would be used in the design of the US Space Shuttle Wing.

Brain drain today

Iraq is said by some to be presently undergoing a brain drain due to its political instability. A report by The Washington Prism in Jan 2006 claims that the International Monetary Fund considers Iran ranked highest in Brain Drain among developing countries.

The former Soviet Union and today's Russia continues to experience a braindrain in science, business, and culture as to many of its Jewish citizens leaving for the United States of America and Israel because of historical Russian anti-Semitism.

New Zealand has also experienced somewhat of a braindrain for a variety of reasons, and many University graduates in that nation are lured to neighboring Australia where wages are generally higher and economic opportunity is more diverse. The Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement makes such exchanges very easy, although it is heavily one-sided as mostly New Zealanders move to Australia while few well-qualified Australians move to New Zealand.

This phenomenon is perhaps most problematic for developing nations, where it is widespread. In these countries, higher education and professional certification are often viewed as the surest path to emigration from a troubled economy or political situation. This has led to situations such as that in many Latin American nations, where enrollment at medical schools is very high, but the nation has a chronic shortage of doctors.

Measuring brain drain

"Brain drain" is a perception that is hard to measure. In 2000, the US Congress announced it was raising the annual cap on the number of temporary work visas granted to highly skilled professionals under its H1B visa program, from 115,000 to 195,000 per year, effective until 2003. That suggests a ballpark figure for the influx of talent into the United States at that time. In the same year the British government cooperating with the Wolfson Foundation, a research charity, launched a £20 million, five-year research award scheme that aimed at drawing the return of the UK’s leading expatriate scientists and sparking the migration of top young researchers to the United Kingdom.

Brain gain

An opposite situation, in which many trained and talented individuals seek entrance into a country, is called a brain gain; this may create a brain drain in the nations that the individuals are leaving. A Canadian symposium in 2000 gave circulation to the new term, at a moment when many highly-skilled Canadians were moving to the United States but, simultaneously, many more qualified immigrants were coming to Canada. This is sometimes referred to as a 'brain exchange'.

European Union

In Europe some Eastern European countries are complaining of a brain drain to places like Ireland and Britain. Lithuania, for example, has lost 100,000 of its citizens in the last few years, among the most educated and young in the country, to emigration to Ireland in particular. (Incidentally Ireland itself used to suffer serious brain drain to America and Britain before the Celtic Tiger economy). The same has happened in Poland after its entry to the European Union. At least 1 million people, usually young and educated (90% of them under the age of 35), emigrated to the Western European countries, mostly to the United Kingdom and Ireland.