Emigration From Eastern Europe With A Focus On Brain Drain

The objective of this paper is to offer a better understanding of the situation on emigration, with a focus on the emigration of the university-educated individuals, from 6 different Eastern European countries, namely Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and the Slovak Republic. The period studied is 1980-2010, with a greater emphasis on the last decade, as the emigration from these countries increased sharply especially after their adhesion to the European Union. A regression analysis was performed, whose purpose is to determine the main factors that influence the brain drain. Data on tertiary educated emigration rates, unemployment rates of the tertiary educated, GDP per capita, wages adjusted for inflation, consumer price indexes and education expenditures were collected for the period 1980-2010 (5 year intervals) and in some cases 2011 as well, for all 6 Eastern European countries. The results showed that Romania and Poland are the most affected by the brain drain. The factors that were significant in shaping emigration were the wages (influenced by GDP) in these countries, as well as the education expenditure (influenced by the inflation).