What Drives Brain Drain?
While a diverse range of motivations lie behind skilled migrants’ intentions to move, it is possible to draw out five common factors: • Wages • Employment • Professional development • Networks • Socioeconomic and political conditions in countries of origin Our analysis tells us, however, that these five factors are not of equal importance to all potential skilled migrants. The priority given to each issue typically depends firstly on the skill and profession of the migrant, and secondly on how far they have progressed in their career. Wages Wage differentials emerge as perhaps the most important cause of brain drain, as economic theories would expect. Groups that highlighted wages as a key motivating factor included students and those working in professions like health care, where the wage differential between countries is wide and where skills are easily transferable. For example, one survey of final-year university science students in Macedonia by economist Verica Janevska found that
