Fuite des cerveaux, qualité de l'éducation et politique d'immigration : l'effet sur le capital humain productif

With the 1967 reform, Canada?s immigration policy changed from a country-preference system to a points system. The latter provides points according to applicants? education level but abstracts from the quality of their education. This paper considers the points system (h), the country-preference system (p), as well as a system that includes both educational quantity and quality (termed the ?q2 points system?). It focuses on their impact on the host country?s average productive human capital ? the product of educational quality and quantity ? or skill level S, on that of the immigrants, and of high (low) education-quality source countries 1 (2). It shows, among others, that i) S is greater under the q2 system than under the points system (S q > S h ) ; ii) S is greater under the country-preference system than under the points system (S p > S h ) ; iii) whether S is greater under the q2 or the country-preference system is ambiguous, with S q > ( p if the quality of education in Country 1 relative to Country 2 is higher (lower) than the degree of preference for migrants from Country 1 relative to Country 2 ; iv) an increase in education quality in the high- (low-) quality source country has a positive (ambiguous) impact on S under all three policies, and the impact is larger under the q2 than under the points system ; and v) a switch from a points system to a q2 system results in a human capital gain or net brain gain for Country 1 and a loss or net brain drain for Country 2.