For Immediate Release
Media Contact: Tony Kopetchny
Tel: 1.202.416-0705; Mobile 1.202.321-5584
E-mail: TKopetchny@cgdev.org
http://www.cgdev.org
Rich Countries Should Compensate Poor Countries for Loss of Skilled Labor—
Center for Global Development Report
Washington, DC: Migration of skilled individuals from developing countries to rich
countries can have far-reaching negative impacts on those left behind, and the rich
countries should consider policies for mitigating these impacts, according to a new book
from the Center for Global Development.
The book, Give Us Your Best and Brightest: The Global Hunt for Talent and Its
Impact on the Developing World, documents convincingly that rich countries are
increasingly seeking to attract highly skilled workers from developing countries, to
strengthen their global competitiveness and to shore up their work forces and tax roles in
order to off-set the effects of rapidly aging populations.
The rich countries and the migrants themselves are the main beneficiaries of these
migration flows, according to the authors, Devesh Kapur and John McHale. But for some
developing countries, the loss of educated people can undermine progress in many ways.
The billions of dollars that migrants send home each year only partly compensate for
these losses, they say.
The biggest negative impact is on institutions, such as an effective government, which are
crucial to development. Since middle class, skilled people both demand and create
effective institutions, their absence undermines institutional development. This is a real
issue in the poorest of the developing countries, including some in Africa, with honest
and willing, but weak, governments.
“The idea that the migration of a significant fraction of a country’s best and brightest
is not particularly harmful and may even be beneficial to the country is simply
unwarranted,” the authors write. “If people of talent and drive are essential for
building institutions, then their loss can have severe consequences.”
Despite this and other negative impacts, such as the loss of desperately needed health
care workers, the authors do not generally recommend that developing countries restrict
the emigration of educated, skilled workers.
Instead they propose a variety of measures that rich and developing countries can take.
Most strikingly, the authors support Jagdish Bhagwati’s longtime proposal that rich
countries compensate poor countries for the loss of skilled labor. This could be done, for
example, by sharing the social security taxes they collect from migrants with their homecountry governments or with the migrants themselves conditional on their returning to the
country of origin. Rich countries could also increase the proportion of low-skilled
immigrants; train more of their own people in key sectors, such as health, to avoid
shortfalls; and avoid “poaching” skilled migrants unless compensation schemes are in
place.
While poor countries need to urgently reform their higher education systems, the
international community needs to seriously revise its myopic attitude that has led to the
neglect of higher education in international development assistance. Poor countries
could also impose an exit tax on migrants to recover the costs of public investments in
higher education. And both rich and poor countries could take steps, including enhancing
temporary migration schemes and loosening residency requirements for citizenship, to
facilitate migrants’ circulation to and from their home countries, thereby benefiting from
the knowledge, skills and capital they acquire while overseas.
CGD President Nancy Birdsall said that publication of the book, in preparation for two
years, marked the start of the Center’s broader investigation into cross-border flows of
people and their causes and consequences for developing countries. The book, she said,
“sets out how immigration policies could be more development friendly—benefiting
rich as well as developing economies.”
The release of the CGD report comes just two weeks after the UN Global Commission on
International Migration titled “Migration in an Interconnected World” that called for
greater coherence, cooperation and capacity to achieve a more effective governance of
international migration.
Birdsall said that Give Us Your Best and Brightest complemented the UN report, by
providing specific policy recommendations for the rich world to enhance the potential
positive on developing countries of the increasing international mobility of skilled labor.
Jagdish Bhagwati, Professor of Economics at Columbia University, calls Give Us Your
Best and Brightest “a splendid book that should become a classic in the field." Dani
Rodrik, Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard University says “This is
a terrific piece of work that will put a much neglected issue on the agenda.”
The authors will present key findings from the book at a CGD event in Washington, DC
on Oct. 18 from 4:00 to 6:00. See the CGD web site for details http://www.cgdev.org/.