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Brain Drain or Brain Gain? Micro Evidence from an African Success Story

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Author Info
Cátia Batista () (University of Oxford and IZA)
Aitor Lacuesta () (Bank of Spain)
Pedro C. Vicente () (University of Oxford)

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Abstract

Does emigration really drain human capital accumulation in origin countries? This paper explores a unique household survey purposely designed and conducted to answer this specific question for the case of Cape Verde - the African country with the largest fraction of tertiary educated population living abroad, despite also having a fast-growing stock of human capital. Unlike previous literature, our tailored survey allows us to adjust existing inflated "brain drain" numbers for educational upgrading of emigrants after migration. We do so by combining our survey data on current, return and non-migrants with information from censuses of the destination countries. Our micro data also enables us to propose a novel, explicit test of "brain gain" arguments according to which the possibility of own future emigration positively impacts educational attainment in the origin country. Crucially, the innovative empirical strategy we propose hinges on the ideal characteristics of our survey, namely on full histories of migrants and on a new set of exclusion restrictions to control for unobserved heterogeneity of emigrants. Our results point to a very substantial impact of the "brain gain" channel on the educational attainment of those left behind. Alternative channels (namely remittances, family disruption, and general equilibrium effects at the local level) are also considered, but these do not seem to play an important role. Overall, we find that there may be substantial human capital gains from allowing free migration and encouraging return migration.

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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in its series IZA Discussion Papers with number 3035.

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Length: 46 pages
Date of creation: Sep 2007
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Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3035

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Related research
Keywords: brain drain; brain gain; brain circulation; international migration; human capital; effects of emigration in origin countries; household survey; Cape Verde; sub-Saharan Africa;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
F22 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Migration
J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
O15 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
O55 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Africa

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
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Full references

Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Docquier, Frederic & Faye, Ousmane & Pestieau, Pierre, 2008. "Is migration a good substitute for education subsidies ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4614, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  2. Satish Chand & Michael A. Clemens, 2008. "Skilled emigration and skill creation: A quasi-experiment," International and Development Economics Working Papers idec08-05, International and Development Economics. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
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