what it is
“Brain drain” is a term coined in the UK after WWII to describe the outflow of human intellectual/scientific/economic talent from a country. Motivation for the outflow can sometimes be religious or ethnic persecution in the home country. More benignly, brain drain is more likely motivated by economic prospects that are perceived to be significantly better away from the home country. According to Wikipedia, the term may have been initially used to describe the movement of British citizens to the US, or to the inflow into the UK of citizens of India.
where is it happening today?
What forms of brain drain can be seen in today’s world?
the Eurozone
–I think we should watch the EU carefully, especially southern Europe. On the one hand, government finances in Italy, Greece… can’t be fixed by raising taxes. People will move into other parts of the Eurozone, for one thing, History also shows that higher tax rates invariably trigger increased tax evasion. So higher rates can end up generating lower revenue. (This isn’t just a European phenomenon: New Jersey has just released an economic study showing the state is suffering a net loss of $150 million in annual tax revenues as a consequence of two income tax rate hikes early in the last decade).
Even though cost-cutting will be the main tool European governments will use to balance heir budgets, the economic stagnation that austerity measures will produce may cause an outflow of intellectual talent from southern Europe to France or Germany, or outside the Eurozone to the UK.
the US
–Anecdotal evidence suggests there’s a budding trend toward emigration from the US to China, because of the latter’s superior economic prospects. There’s also a movement on the Northeast to create publicly funded schools that emphasize Asian culture and history–and where instruction might be in Mandarin.
–a combination of high taxes, lack of home-grown engineering graduates and immigration restrictions that severely limit the number of Indian and Chinese engineers able to work in the US has meant a continual outflow of technology manufacturing away from the US.
China
–To my mind, the most curious case of potential brain drain is that recently reported by the Wall Street Journal. It’s the potential outflow of wealthy Chinese from the mainland. They’re not seeking political or economic freedom, or at least not simply that. What’s prompting them to consider emigration–overwhelmingly to either the US or Canada–are social concerns, including:
–poor schools
–bad medical treatment
–pollution
in that order. Also:
–unsafe food (local municipal authorities sometimes offer industrial waste disposal sites for lease as agricultural land), and
–the one-child policy.
investment implications
At this point, these developments are more curiosities than anything else. But events in southern Europe bear close watching. That’s the place where emigration has the most potential for economic disruption, in my opinion.