A gendered assessment of the brain drain

International migration is a diverse phenomenon and its impact on source and destination countries has attracted the increased attention of policymakers, scientists and international agencies. Due to the lack of harmonised data, the brain drain debate has, until recently, remained essentially theoretical. Docquier and Marfouk provided estimates of emigration stocks and rates by educational attainment. This paper updates and extends the Docquier-Marfouk data set. The authors use new sources, homogenise definitions of what a migrant is, and compute gender-disaggregated indicators of the brain drain. Emigration stocks and rates are provided by level of schooling and gender for 195 source countries in 1990 and 2000.

The data set in this paper is used to capture the recent trend in women’s brain drain and to analyse its causes and consequences for developing countries. The authors show that women represent an increasing share of the OECD immigration stock and exhibit relatively higher rates of brain drain than men. The gender gap in skilled migration is strongly correlated with the gender gap in educational attainment at origin. The authors conclude that equating women’s and men’s access to education would probably reduce gender differences in the brain drain.