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Recognizing new trends in brain drain studies in the framework of global sustainability.

1. Introduction

2. methodology, 3.1. thematic sources trends analysis, 3.2. actors and terms trend analysis, 4. discussion, 5. conclusions.

• RQ1. Is there a critical mass of scientific research regarding the brain drain phenomenon?
• RQ2. How has the study of the brain drain phenomenon evolved thematically and conceptually?
• RQ3. Is it possible to identify classic authors on this topic? Are we facing the emergence of new reference authors?

Supplementary Materials

Author contributions, institutional review board statement, informed consent statement, data availability statement, acknowledgments, conflicts of interest.

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Vega-Muñoz, A.; Gónzalez-Gómez-del-Miño, P.; Espinosa-Cristia, J.F. Recognizing New Trends in Brain Drain Studies in the Framework of Global Sustainability. Sustainability 2021 , 13 , 3195. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13063195

Vega-Muñoz A, Gónzalez-Gómez-del-Miño P, Espinosa-Cristia JF. Recognizing New Trends in Brain Drain Studies in the Framework of Global Sustainability. Sustainability . 2021; 13(6):3195. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13063195

Vega-Muñoz, Alejandro, Paloma Gónzalez-Gómez-del-Miño, and Juan Felipe Espinosa-Cristia. 2021. "Recognizing New Trends in Brain Drain Studies in the Framework of Global Sustainability" Sustainability 13, no. 6: 3195. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13063195

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Brain drain: what is the role of institutions?

• Published: 30 November 2023

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• Fanyu Chen 1 ,
• Zi Wen Vivien Wong   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6362-3166 1 &
• Siong Hook Law 2  

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Brain drain is closely associated with human capital deficiencies and obstacles in economic development. In spite of its crucial economic implications, nations, especially the developing ones, have failed to prevent brain drain due to the focus on simple restrictive policies and the ignorance of institutional factors like weakly-enforced law and order, unfulfilled basic human rights, and others in preventing the outflow high skilled labor. Thus, this paper aims to investigate the impact of institutional quality on brain drain in 100 countries from 2007 to 2019, using system Generalized Method of Moments estimator to estimate the model involving data collected from the International Country Risk Guide, The Quality of Government Institute, and the World Bank. The empirical results indicated that quality of institutions is essential in preventing the outflow of highly skilled workers. It has become imperative for policy-makers in these countries to uphold and strengthen their nations’ institutional frameworks in order to retain and attract the valuable talents to stay on and reside in their own countries.

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Chen, F., Wong, Z.W.V. & Law, S.H. Brain drain: what is the role of institutions?. J. Ind. Bus. Econ. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40812-023-00286-w

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The brain drain from developing countries

The brain drain produces many more losers than winners in developing countries

Université Catholique de Louvain, and National Fund for Scientific Research, Belgium, and IZA, Germany

Elevator pitch

The proportion of foreign-born people in rich countries has tripled since 1960, and the emigration of high-skilled people from poor countries has accelerated. Many countries intensify their efforts to attract and retain foreign students, which increases the risk of brain drain in the sending countries. In poor countries, this transfer can change the skill structure of the labor force, cause labor shortages, and affect fiscal policy, but it can also generate remittances and other benefits from expatriates and returnees. Overall, it can be a boon or a curse for developing countries, depending on the country’s characteristics and policy objectives.

Key findings

The income-maximizing level of a brain drain is usually positive in developing countries, meaning that some emigration of the more skilled is beneficial.

A brain drain stimulates education, induces remittance flows, reduces international transaction costs, and generates benefits in source countries from both returnees and the diaspora abroad.

Appropriate policy adjustments, which depend on the characteristics and policy objectives of the source country, can help to maximize the gains or minimize the costs of the brain drain.

The effective brain drain exceeds the income-maximizing level in the vast majority of developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, Central America, and small countries.

A brain drain may cause fiscal losses.

Above a certain level, brain drain reduces the stock of human capital and induces occupational distortions.

Author's main message

The impact of the brain drain on a source country’s welfare and development can be beneficial or harmful. The evidence suggests that there are many more losers than winners among developing countries. Whether a country gains or loses depends on country-specific factors, such as the level and composition of migration, the country’s level of development, and such characteristics as population size, language, and geographic location. Policymakers should gauge the costs and benefits of the brain drain in order to design appropriate policy responses.

The term “brain drain” refers to the international transfer of human capital resources, and it applies mainly to the migration of highly educated individuals from developing to developed countries. In lay usage, the term is generally used in a narrower sense and relates more specifically to the migration of engineers, physicians, scientists, and other very high-skilled professionals with university training, often between developed countries.

Although a concern for rich countries, the brain drain has long been viewed as a serious constraint on the development of poor countries. Comparative data reveal that by 2000 there were 20 million high-skilled immigrants (foreign-born workers with higher education) living in member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a 70% increase in ten years. Two-thirds of these high-skilled immigrants came from developing and transition countries.

Discussion of pros and cons

Key trends in high-skilled migration.

According to the United Nations Global Migration Database, the number of international migrants increased from 75 million in 1960 to 214 million in 2010. This about parallels the growth in the world population, so the world migration rate increased only slightly in relative terms, from 2.5% to 3.1% of the world population. The major part of this change is artificial and due to the break-up of the former Soviet Union, when what was once the internal movement of workers became reclassified as international migration after 1990. Overall, the share of international migrants in the world population has been stable for the last 50 years.

But the picture changes when the focus is narrowed to migration to developed countries. The proportion of international migrants residing in high-income countries relative to the total in all possible destinations increased from 43% to 60% between 1960 and 2010. As measured by the proportion of the foreign-born in the total population of high-income countries, the average immigration rate to these countries has tripled since 1960 and doubled since 1985. The increase has followed the same trajectory as the ratio of trade to gross domestic product (GDP) (see Figure 1 ).

More of these migrants are coming from non-OECD countries. Indeed, a database of global bilateral migration published in 2011 reveals that as of 2000, migration between developing countries still dominated the global migrant stock: at 72.6 million people, migration between developing countries constituted about 45% of all international migration (see Figure 2 ) [2] . Next came migration from developing to developed countries (55 million, 34% of all migrants) and then migration between developed countries (28 million, 17%). But the growth in the number of migrants was driven largely by emigration from developing countries to developed countries, which increased from ten million to 55 million between 1960 and 2000, faster than trade.

Emigration rates of high-skilled workers exceed those of low-skill workers in virtually all countries (see Figure 3 ) [1] . The skill bias in emigration rates is particularly pronounced in low-income countries (see What drives the brain drain, and how can we quantify it? ). The largest brain drain rates are observed in small, poor countries in the tropics, and they rise over the 1990s. The worst-affected countries see more than 80% of their “brains” emigrating abroad, such as for Haiti, Jamaica, and several small states with fewer than one million workers. About 20 other countries are losing between one-third and one-half of their college graduates. Most are in sub-Saharan Africa (such as Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Somalia) or Asia (such as Afghanistan and Cambodia). A few are small, high-income countries (such as Hong Kong and Ireland).

Expected adverse and beneficial effects of skilled migration

The brain drain has long been viewed as detrimental to the growth potential of the home country and the welfare of those left behind. It is usually expected to be even more harmful for the least developed countries because, as explained above, with increasing development, positive selection in emigration and brain drain rates fall.

A brain drain can also have benefits for home countries. Alongside positive feedback effects from remittances, circular migration, and the participation of high-skilled migrants in business networks, innovation, and transfers of technology, consider the effect of migration prospects on the formation of human capital in home countries. New research suggests that limited high-skilled emigration can be beneficial for growth and development, especially for a limited number of large, middle-income developing countries. But for the vast majority of poor and small developing countries, skilled emigration rates significantly exceed the optimal rate (see Terms used in migration studies ).

The broad diversity of brain drain effects on development has been illustrated in case studies. The contribution of expatriate Indian engineers and information technology professionals to the Indian growth miracle has been recognized. But the medical brain drain from sub-Saharan Africa has been detrimental. A brain drain can also generate both beneficial and adverse effects for long-term development—as with the emigration of Filipino nurses to the US or Egyptian teachers to Arab states in the Persian Gulf.

Adverse effects

The social returns to human capital are likely to exceed its private returns given the many externalities, both technological and sociological (see Terms used in migration studies ). This externality argument has been central in the literature since the 1970s, and the seminal contribution on this subject concludes that the brain drain entails significant losses for those left behind and increases global inequality [3] .

Another cost is that high-skilled emigrants do not pay taxes in their home country once they have left. As education is partly or totally subsidized by the government, emigrants leave before they can repay their debt to society. This fiscal cost may be reinforced by governments distorting the provision of public education away from general (portable) skills when graduates leave, with the country perhaps ending up educating too many lawyers and too few nurses, doctors, or engineers.

A third negative effect is inducing shortages of manpower in key activities, as when engineers or health professionals emigrate in disproportionately large numbers, undermining a country’s ability to adopt new technologies or deal with health crises.

Fourth, the brain drain increases the technological gap between leading and developing nations because the concentration of human capital in the most advanced economies contributes to their technological progress.

Ambiguous effect on the educational and occupational structure of the labor force

The argument can, however, be reversed because uncertainty about the prospects for migration may create a bias in the opposite direction. When education is seen as a passport to emigration, this creates additional incentives to undertake further education. But if young people are uncertain about their chances of future migration when they make education decisions, this can be turned into a gain for the home country under certain circumstances [4] , [5] .

Case studies on the “brain gain” hypothesis

In Tonga and Papua New Guinea, nearly all (85%) of the very top high school students contemplate emigration while still in high school; this leads them to take additional classes and make changes to their course choices in favor of fields such as science and commerce [6] . In Cape Verde, emigration prospects are among the main drivers of human capital formation [7] . In Fiji, the educational attainment of ethnic Fijians has been compared with that of Fijians of Indian ancestry in the aftermath of the 1987 military coup, which resulted in physical violence and discriminatory policies against the Indian minority [8] . For the latter, the correlation was strong between changes in emigration prospects and human capital investments.

Other studies have not found evidence of a brain gain. This is so for the brain drain of physicians from sub-Saharan Africa, where limited training capacities prevent students from responding to incentives, or migration from Mexico to the US, where there is a bias toward low-skill workers in emigration prospects.

From a development perspective, however, what matters is not how many of a country’s native-born engage in higher education, but how many of those who do engage remain at home. The brain drain can benefit a home country if it increases the proportion of college graduates in the population remaining. There are two conditions for such a benefit to obtain. First, the level of development in the country should be low enough to generate strong incentives for the more educated to emigrate, but not so low that personal liquidity constraints on investment in education become strongly limiting (in which case the incentive cannot operate). Second, the probability of emigration by high-skilled workers must be sufficiently low—for example, below 15–20%. On average, the level of brain drain that maximizes human capital accumulation in a developing country is around 10%. This level varies across countries, depending on their size, location, language, and public policies. In particular, it declines with development and the effectiveness of the higher education system.

The hypothetical levels of human capital that would be obtained in the absence of brain drain have been simulated and compared with actual levels [5] . Countries with low human capital and low emigration rates are likely to experience a net gain. But there appear to be many more losers than winners (88 losers and 20 winners out of 108 developing countries). Importantly, the losers show substantial losses, and the winners only small gains. The situation of many sub-Saharan African, Central American, and small developing states appears worrisome in this respect. In contrast, the largest developing countries (Brazil, China, India) all seem to experience moderate gains.

Other beneficial feedbacks

The global impact of brain drain on development and the income of those left behind depends on other beneficial feedbacks operating after migration. The main ones are remittances, circular migration, and externalities from the presence of emigrants abroad (such as lower bilateral trade costs). The level of brain drain that maximizes income and development in the home country may then exceed 10% by a few percentage points, depending on the size of these feedbacks.

Remittances

Remittances by high-skilled migrants to family or relatives can replenish the stock of human capital that may have been depleted in the home country by the brain drain. The evidence is still unclear on the relative propensity of high-skilled and low-skilled migrants to remit. In 14 household surveys on immigrants in 11 destination countries, the relationship between education and the likelihood of remitting is mixed, but the relationship between education and the amount remitted is strong and positive [9] .

Overall, high-skilled migrants remit more, but this result does not hold in all surveys, suggesting that the link between education and remittances is diverse and varies across host/home-country pairs. In the absence of surveys that match sending and receiving households, it remains difficult to quantify the effect of high-skilled migrant remittances on investment, poverty, or inequality in the home country. The economic consequences of remittances likely vary across home countries [9] .

Circular migration

Return or circular (repeated return) migration is a promising route for allowing host and home countries to share the benefits of high-skilled labor mobility. In developing countries, the possibility of temporary emigration increases the returns to education and has the same effects on human capital formation as permanent, uncertain migration; returnees’ additional knowledge and financial capital acquired while abroad generates important benefits, especially for technology adoption, entrepreneurship, and productivity. Intentions to return are similar across skill groups, and return decisions depend on the economic and political situation in the home country.

Although return migration is probably the least documented aspect of international migration, it is commonly accepted that historical examples of massive return migration of high-skilled workers are more a consequence than a cause of development and sound policy reform in home countries.

Diaspora externalities

High-skilled migrants can reduce transaction costs between countries and thus facilitate trade, foreign direct investment, and technology transfers between host and home countries. There can also be diaspora externalities for institutional quality and for promoting democracy in the home country.

Is the brain drain a cause or consequence of poverty?

Brain drain and the economic development of home countries are two interdependent processes. First, a brain drain affects development, and its effect becomes unambiguously negative when the emigration rate is high. Second, a lack of economic growth motivates college graduates to emigrate. Interactions between these two variables can be the source of vicious and virtuous circles linked to individual decisions to migrate. Once a significant brain drain gets under way, it can have damaging effects on the economy that induce further waves of emigration by high-skilled workers (Iran after the 1978–1979 revolution, the Irish crisis of the early 1980s, the ex-USSR republics after 1991). But when a return is significant, it gives incentives to other waves of returnees to come home (Ireland after the fiscal reform of 1987, Taiwan in the 1980s).

Human capital accumulation and development slow with the brain drain, the “skill-setting curve,” and the brain drain slows with development, the “migration-setting curve” [10] . An intersection between these two downward-sloping curves represents an equilibrium. The system may generate multiple equilibria: countries that share similar characteristics may end up in a favorable equilibrium with low poverty and a low brain drain, or an unfavorable one with high poverty and a high brain drain.

In the majority of developing countries, the favorable equilibrium prevails, and the observed level of brain drain should be seen as an inevitable by-product of poverty. But in about 50% of small developing countries—those with fewer than one million working-age adults—the unfavorable equilibrium prevails, implying that poverty and brain drain could be reduced if individual emigration decisions were coordinated. This is the case with small countries such as Cape Verde, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Mauritius, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Suriname.

In badly coordinated countries, a move to the favorable equilibrium could increase wages and GDP per capita by more than 100%. If a mass brain drain is fairly recent in the country and a good equilibrium is stable, the likelihood of a coordination failure depends on how people deviate from the preceding good equilibrium in response to adverse shocks in the recent past. Small states are much more likely to be badly coordinated because migration from such states is more responsive to economic shocks. These small countries require appropriate development policies, such as temporary subsidies for the repatriation of high-skilled expatriates.

Limitations and gaps

Due to data constraints, identifying the impact of the brain drain on welfare and development in originating countries is complex. Determining the size of the effects and whether they are positive or negative remains controversial among economists. A first priority is to improve the data on international migration along several dimensions, particularly its frequency, the quality of education, and the levels of education in different disciplines. Second, the state of comparative data on immigration laws and policies, especially their bilateral dimension (between home and host countries), is another limiting factor on cross-country studies of the determinants of migration flows and for analysis of the effects of policy reforms.

With few exceptions, micro-studies of migration and development have not yet taken full advantage of the randomization revolution in statistics. A third task, then, is to design and exploit the bilateral dimensions of future migration data sets for cross-country analysis and, at a micro level, to investigate natural events and policy experiments to identify the causal effects of high-skilled migration on development outcomes.

Summary and policy advice

For many developing countries the income-maximizing or “optimal” emigration rate of highly educated workers is positive (at about 10% of the total). Imposing too many restrictions on the international mobility of educated residents could be detrimental for development, although the brain drain exceeds its optimal level in most poor countries. So, for starters, policymakers should determine the level and composition of migration from their country—and whether migration is on balance harmful or beneficial.

The conditions under which a country gains or loses are not beyond its control. To a large extent, they depend on the policies it adopts (education policy, quality of institutions) and those in force in the main host countries. The appropriateness of adjustments of local policies and supranational interventions (such as taxing emigrants, subsidizing repatriation, providing compensatory development assistance) vary with such country characteristics as population size, location, and language (see Appropriate policy responses to the brain drain are country-specific ). Policymakers should gauge the costs and benefits of the brain drain in order to design appropriate policy responses.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks two anonymous referees and the IZA World of Labor editors for many helpful suggestions on earlier drafts. This article is based on previous work [10] , [11] , [12] .

Competing interests

The IZA World of Labor project is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity . The author declares to have observed these principles.

© Frédéric Docquier

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The Brain Drain: A Survey of the Literature

Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Department of Statistics, Working Paper No. 2006-03-02

29 Pages Posted: 8 Apr 2009

Pierpaolo Giannoccolo

University of Bologna

Date Written: April 7, 2009

This article reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the Brain Drain (BD hereafter). This literature starts in the 1950s and focuses on different economic and social topics. We survey about 400 articles which treat the BD's phenomenon. Through the complete list of articles would be endless, this review can be used as a systematic study to analyse the theoretical evolutions of the BD from the 1950s to the recent years. Actually there are not studies that help the researcher to understand better the BD's literature. In this work we try to propose a first analysis of this literature that can be a useful starting point for furthermore research. In particular, we explore the several BD's definitions (we show that there in not an unique definition of the BD and that the BD is a wide and complex phenomenon); we analyse the main literature of the BD and we propose an ideal path to interpret this literature; we investigated the historical roots of the BD by quoting the cases that studies "ante litteram" the BD; we identified the several researchers that during these years have studied the BD and the models that they have used; finally we recreated the geography of the BD to better understand the motivation behind these studies.

Keywords: Brain Drain, International Migration, Human Capital, Growth, Economic Methodology and History of Economic Thought

JEL Classification: B20, B41, F02, F22, H20, I20, I30

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Pierpaolo Giannoccolo (Contact Author)

University of bologna ( email ).

Department of Economics Piazza Scaravilli, 2 40125 Bologna, 40125 Italy

HOME PAGE: http://www2.dse.unibo.it/giannoccolo

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The reduction of the brain drain: Problems and policies

1968, Minerva

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Brain drain of healthcare professionals from Pakistan from 1971 to 2022: Evidence-based analysis

Sultan ayoub meo.

1 Sultan Ayoub Meo, MD, PhD, FRCP Department of Physiology, College of Medicine, King Saud University, Riyadh, 11461, Saudi Arabia.

Tehreem Sultan

2 Tehreem Sultan, Harvard Law School, Harvard University, Massachusetts, USA

Since the creation of Pakistan in August 1947, political instability has been a persistent issue in the country, causing a migration of highly qualified, skilled people, and healthcare professionals. From 1971 to 2022 the total number of highly qualified and skilled people including healthcare professionals who migrated from the country is 60,19,888. Among them, 251677 (4.18%), were highly qualified, 455097 (7.55%) were highly skilled, and 5313114 (88.27%) were skilled professionals. Moreover, 50110 (0.83%) were healthcare professionals including doctors 31418 (62.69%), nurses 12853 (25.64%), and pharmacists 5839 (11.65%). The unsustainable political environment, lack of advanced technology-based institutes, poor healthcare infrastructure, low job opportunities and salary benefits in Pakistan caused the brain drain of highly qualified people including healthcare professionals. It adversely affected the academic institutes, the healthcare system, socio-economic growth, research productivity, and the development of the nation. The government of Pakistan must establish sustainable policies to minimize the brain drain of highly qualified people, and healthcare professionals, and recuperate the prosperity of their academic institutes and healthcare system for better healthcare services, and the advancement and sustainable development of the nation.

INTRODUCTION

Pakistan is home to 231.4 million people, 1 blessed with many rivers, mountains, minerals, natural gas reserves, coal and salt mines, and well-fertile agricultural land with multi-seasonal products. The country has 247 universities and degree-awarding institutions, 2 including 176 medical and dental schools. 3 Since the creation of Pakistan in August 1947, political instability has been a persistent issue in the country. 4 Political instability reduces economic growth, threatens regional and foreign investors, and minimizes people’s savings, earning capacity and purchasing powers. Moreover, political instability causes inflation and unemployment, creating social unrest and uncertainty among people. 5 An unstable political environment creates ambiguity among the public, academicians, healthcare workers, and researchers, and causes uncertainty in policies and decisions. 6 The sociopolitical unrest significantly contributes to the instability in low and middle-income countries and causes a brain drain of skilled professionals, 7 academicians, researchers, and healthcare professionals. The literature is lacking in highlighting the barn drain from Pakistan. This article emphasizes the brain drain of highly skilled people and healthcare professionals from Pakistan during the period 1971-2022.

Brain Drain in Pakistan: 1971 to 2022:

From 1971 to 2022 the total number of highly qualified and skilled professionals who migrated from Pakistan is 60,19,888. Among them, 251677 (4.18%), were highly qualified, 455097 (7.55%) were highly skilled, and 5314004 (88.27%) were skilled professionals ( Table-I , Fig.1 ). While analyzing the profession of these highly qualified people, it was found that 50110 (0.83%) were healthcare professionals including doctors 31418 (62.69%), nurses 12853 (25.64%), and pharmacists 5839 (11.65%) ( Table-II , Fig.2 ).

Brain drains of highly qualified and skilled professionals including healthcare professionals from Pakistan (1971-2022). 8

Migration of highly qualified, highly skilled people including healthcare Professionals from Pakistan (1971-2022).

Healthcare professionals migrated from Pakistan during the period 1971-2022. 8

Migration of healthcare professionals from Pakistan during the period (1971-2022).

While analyzing the data for the year 2022, about 832,339, skilled professionals headed abroad. Among them, 17976 (2.15%) were highly qualified and 20865 (2.50%) were highly skilled professionals. It shows that 2312 people left their homeland per day during the recent year. Among them, 2,464 (0.29%) were doctors, 1768 (0.21%) were nurses and paramedics ( Table-I & II and Fig.1 & 2 ).

Brain drain: origination and destination:

From 1971 to 2022, most people migrated from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, South Korea, Malaysia, the UK, USA, Switzerland, China, Brunei, and Germany. In the recent year 2022, the people travelled from Pakistan to the Saudi Arabia 514909 (61.86%), UAE 128477 (15.43%), Oman 82380 (9.89%), Malaysia 6175 (0.74%), Qatar 57999 (6.96%), Bahrain 3653 (0.43%), UK 2922 (0.35%), Cyprus 2906 (0.34%), Iraq 2387 (0.28%), Kuwait 2089 (0.25%), South Korea 2025 (0.24%), Japan 900 (0.10%), USA 801 (0.09%), China 673 (0.08%), Italy 350 (0.04%), and 23693 (2.845) people were left to the rest of the world. 8

In the year 2022, people who migrated from Pakistan are from Islamabad 83169 (9.99%), Lahore 66708 (8.01%), Karachi 44341 (5.32%), Faisalabad 28385 (3.41%), Peshawar 20519 (2.46%), Rawalpindi 12437 (1.49%), Multan 7563 (0.90%), Abbottabad 6737 (0.80%), Jamshoro 5924 (0.71%), Bahawalpur 4788 (0.57%), Quetta 4328 (0.51%). These are the major cities of Pakistan from where most people migrated abroad. 8

Brain drain factors:

The brain drain or the human capital flight, occur in their pursuit of better living situations, high wages, advanced technology base environment, and better political conditions in various places worldwide. People pursue their careers because of the freedom of independence, and intellectual satisfaction of creativity. 9 Although these characteristics are inspiring, society always needs minds of creative thinking. There are multiple factors including political instability influence the migration of skilled people from Pakistan. The most concerning factor is that young people are not the only ones who are rushing for the exit, people in their middle age are also trying to move out of the country due to unemployment, inflation, poverty, security, and economic issues. 9 , 10

The people get disheartened because of low incentives for their academic credentials and experience causing them to migrate to developed countries. The common reasons why the brain drain takes place are fewer career options, low salary packages, lack of benefits, low quality of life, political instability, and crime conditions. 10 , 11 Moreover, long term war in Afghanistan also effected the state and caused brain drain. The brain drain of highly qualified people including physicians, researchers and academicians adversely affected the academic institutes, science, research productivity, socioeconomic growth and sustainable development of the nation. 12

Impact of brain drain on academia and research:

In Pakistan, political instability, lack of job opportunities and limited resources negatively affect the progress and prospects of universities and academic institutions and cause the university faculty to flee from their universities and homeland. 11 The science faculty not only migrate but also carry inventions and scientific prints. The migration of university faculty members developed a gap in the global standing of universities. This may be one of the reasons that Pakistani universities did not achieve a place among the top-ranked universities in the world. 13 , 14 Although, Higher Education Commission (HEC) was established in year 2002, and a lot of efforts were made, opportunities were provided to enhance the quality of research by foreign collaborations, but the important aspect of brain drain was not amply addressed.

More recently, Nadir et al 2023 15 reported that one in three medical students intends to migrate abroad after graduation due to a lack of resources and mismanagement in Pakistan. This has been adversely affecting Pakistan’s health system. Saluja and colleagues, 2020 16 estimate the cost due to mortality linked with physician migration. The authors reported an annual loss of about $15·86 billion with the greatest costs incurred by India, Nigeria, Pakistan, and South Africa. The economic, social, and political instability in low-middle-income countries has induced further migration waves of healthcare workers compounding the pressure on already overstretched health systems. 16

The recent wave of political instability in Pakistan in the year 2022 caused the migration of about 832,339 highly qualified and skilled people including healthcare professionals to head abroad. The migration of such a large number of professionals is likely to negatively impact research productivity and visibility. From January 2000 to December 2022, the number of articles published in the web of science-indexed journals worldwide was 248457. As per the Web of Science 2022 report, the rising trend decreased in the year 2022. 17 The most potential reason for decreasing research productivity may be the political instability and brain drain from Pakistan.

In Pakistan, there are a total of 380 Higher Education Commission (HEC) indexed journals in various academic disciplines. 18 Out of 380 HEC-indexed academic journals only 11 (2.89%) academic journals achieved a place in the Web of Science and quartile ranking. Among these journals only one journal, the Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences (Impact Factor 2.340) crossed the IF of more than 2.0; the remaining journals have an impact factor of between 0.57-1.80. 17 The highly qualified and skilled people are sending regular remittances, but it cannot compensate the loss of country in terms of qualified people that are much needed to participate in the universities, research institutes, and healthcare sector for the overall prosperity of the nation. It must be analyzed deep down whether this compensation is good enough or whether it is a great loss for the country to lose the highly qualified and skilled professionals who could help the country in a better way rather than just sending the remittances earned. The higher number of highly qualified and skilled professionals who departed the country is a cause of concern and it decreases academic and research productivity.

Science itself is one of the more migrant professions, and many scientists’ cross borders in search of better options and opportunities. Today, more people live outside the country of their birth than ever before. 19 Knowledge and research productivity is a borderless enterprise, but some states such as Pakistan are worried that they are losing their top researchers. The worldwide highly cited scientists, one in eight scientists were born in developing countries, and 80% of those had since moved to developed states. 20 A large number of Pakistan intellectuals try to return to their placental place after staying a long period in developed nations but once they return too late, they feel misfits in the system and their career structure. Moreover, the system is not easily accepting these intellectuals, hence the brain drain is a highly challenging issue for the state.

CONCLUSIONS

Over the last fifty years, about six million highly qualified and skilled professionals migrated from the country. The unsustainable political environment, poor healthcare infrastructure, low job opportunities and salary benefits in Pakistan caused the brain drain of highly qualified people including healthcare professionals. Moreover, Afghanistan war and war on terror also had a compounding adverse affect on Pakistan’s state, society and brain drain. It adversely affected the academic institutes, healthcare system, socio-economic growth, research productivity, and the development of the nation. The government of Pakistan must establish sustainable policies to minimize the brain drain and recuperate the prosperity of their academic institutes and healthcare system for better healthcare services, and the advancement and sustainable development of the nation.

Authors’ Contributions:

SAM: Study design, writing and editing the manuscript.

TS: Literature review, data collection, entry, and checking and analysis.

Acknowledgements:

The authors extend their appreciation to the “Researchers Supporting Project (RSP-2023 R47), King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia”.

Declaration of interests: None.

Institutional review board statement: None.

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The brain makes a lot of waste. now scientists think they know where it goes.

Jon Hamilton

The brain has a waste removal system and scientists are figuring out how it works

New insights into the brain's waste-removal system could one day help researchers better understand and prevent many brain disorders. Andriy Onufriyenko/Getty Images hide caption

About 170 billion cells are in the brain, and as they go about their regular tasks, they produce waste — a lot of it. To stay healthy, the brain needs to wash away all that debris. But how exactly it does this has remained a mystery.

Now, two teams of scientists have published three papers that offer a detailed description of the brain's waste-removal system. Their insights could help researchers better understand, treat and perhaps prevent a broad range of brain disorders.

The papers, all published in the journal Nature , suggest that during sleep, slow electrical waves push the fluid around cells from deep in the brain to its surface. There, a sophisticated interface allows the waste products in that fluid to be absorbed into the bloodstream, which takes them to the liver and kidneys to be removed from the body.

One of the waste products carried away is amyloid, the substance that forms sticky plaques in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease.

This new brain-mapping device could make neurosurgery safer

There's growing evidence that in Alzheimer's disease, the brain's waste-removal system is impaired, says Jeffrey Iliff , who studies neurodegenerative diseases at the University of Washington but was not a part of the new studies.

The new findings should help researchers understand precisely where the problem is and perhaps fix it, Iliff says.

"If we restore drainage, can we prevent the development of Alzheimer's disease?" he asks.

A brief history of brainwashing

The new studies come more than a decade after Iliff and Dr. Maiken Nedergaard , a Danish scientist, first proposed that the clear fluids in and around the brain are part of a system to wash away waste products.

The scientists named it the glymphatic system , a nod to the body's lymphatic system , which helps fight infection, maintain fluid levels and filter out waste products and abnormal cells.

Both systems work like plumbing in a house, says Jonathan Kipnis of Washington University in St. Louis, an author of two of the new papers.

"You have the water pipes and the sewage pipes," Kipnis says. "So the water comes in clean, and then you wash your hands, and the dirty water goes out."

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But the lymphatic system uses a network of thin tubes that transports waste to the bloodstream. The brain lacks these tubes.

So scientists have spent decades trying to answer a fundamental question, Kipnis says: "How does a waste molecule from the middle of the brain make it all the way out to the borders of the brain" and ultimately out of the body?

Part of the answer came in 2012 and 2013, when Iliff and Nedergaard began proposing the glymphatic system. They showed that in sleeping animals, cerebrospinal fluid begins to flow quickly through the brain, flushing out waste.

But what was pushing the fluid? And how was it transporting waste across the barrier that usually separates brain tissue from the bloodstream?

Waves that wash

Kipnis and his team began looking at what the brain was doing as it slept. As part of that effort, they measured the power of a slow electrical wave that appears during deep sleep in animals.

And they realized something: "By measuring the wave, we are also measuring the flow of interstitial fluid," the liquid found in the spaces around cells, Kipnis says.

It turned out that the waves were acting as a signal, synchronizing the activity of neurons and transforming them into tiny pumps that push fluid toward the brain's surface, the team reported in February in the journal Nature .

In a second paper published in the same issue of Nature , a team led by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology provided more evidence that slow electrical waves help clear out waste.

The team used mice that develop a form of Alzheimer's. They exposed these mice to bursts of sound and light that occurred 40 times a second.

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The stimulation induced brain waves in the animals that occurred at the same, slow frequency.

Tests showed that the waves increased the flow of clean cerebrospinal fluid into the brain and the flow of dirty fluid out of the brain. They also showed that the fluid was carrying amyloid, the substance that builds up in the brains of Alzheimer's patients.

In a paper published a few weeks earlier, Kipnis had shown how waste, including amyloid, appeared to be crossing the protective membrane that usually isolates the brain.

Kipnis and his team focused on a vein that passes through this membrane.

"Around the vein, you have a sleeve, which is never fully sealed," he says. "That's where the [cerebrospinal fluid] is coming out" and transferring waste to the body's lymphatic system.

From mice to humans

Together, the new studies suggest that keeping the brain's waste-clearance system functioning requires two distinct steps: one to push waste into the cerebrospinal fluid that surrounds the brain, and another to move it into the lymphatic system and eventually out of the body.

"We've described them separately," Iliff says, "but from a biological perspective, they almost certainly are coupled."

Iliff says many of the new findings in mice still need to be confirmed in people.

"The anatomical differences between a rodent and a human," he says, "they're pretty substantial."

But he says the results are consistent with research on what leads to neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer's.

Researchers know that the brain's waste-clearance system can be impaired by age, injuries and diseases that clog blood vessels in the brain.

"All of these are risk factors for Alzheimer's disease," Iliff says.

Impaired waste removal may also be a factor in Parkinson's disease, headache and even depression, Iliff says. So finding ways to help the brain clean itself — perhaps by inducing those slow electrical waves — might prevent a wide array of disorders.

Correction June 26, 2024

A previous version of this story incorrectly described the bursts of sound and light used in an experiment as occurring at 40 times a minute. They occurred at 40 times a second.

• Alzheimer's
• brain health
• human brain
• neuroscience