经济学人下载:人才外流,是得还是失?

Many now take issue with this view (see article). Several economists reckon that the brain-drain hypothesis fails to account for the effects of remittances, for the beneficial effects of returning migrants, and for the possibility that being able to migrate to greener pastures induces people to get more education. Some argue that once these factors are taken into account, an exodus of highly skilled people could turn out to be a net benefit to the countries they leave. Recent studies of migration from countries as far apart as Ghana, Fiji, India and Romania have found support for this “brain gain” idea.

现在很多人不再认同这个观点。（见文章）。有些经济学家认为，人才外流有一些被忽视的好处，例如汇款，归国移民所带来的价值，或是移民他国的想法促使了人们接受更多的教育。有些人声称，一旦这些因素考虑进去，高技能人才的流出对他们的国家来说可能变成好事。近来对加纳，斐济，印度和罗马尼亚这四个相距甚远的国家的研究，发现了支持这种“人才外流有益”观点的证据。

The most obvious way in which migrants repay their homelands is through remittances. Workers from developing countries remitted a total of $325 billion in 2010, according to the World Bank. In Lebanon, Lesotho, Nepal, Tajikistan and a few other places, remittances are more than 20% of GDP. A skilled migrant may earn several multiples of what his income would have been had he stayed at home. A study of Romanian migrants to America found that the average emigrant earned almost $12,000 a year more in America than he would have done in his native land, a huge premium for someone from a country where income per person is around $7,500 (at market exchange rates).

移民回馈他们祖国最常见的方式就是汇款。世行称，2010年发展中国家移民的汇款总额达3250亿美元。在黎巴嫩，莱索托，尼泊尔，塔吉克斯坦和少数其它国家，移民的汇款数额占到了GDP的20%以上。一个技术移民在他国的人收入可能是在本国的好几倍。一项关于美国的罗马尼亚移民的研究发现，平均地说，移民在美国的年收入比在其本国的收入要高出近12000美元，对于那些来自人均年收入只有约7500美元（按市场汇率计算）的国家的移民来说，这是笔不小的数目。

It is true that many skilled migrants have been educated and trained partly at the expense of their (often cash-strapped) governments. Some argue that poor countries should therefore rethink how much they spend on higher education. Indians, for example, often debate whether their government should continue to subsidise the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), its elite engineering schools, when large numbers of IIT graduates end up in Silicon Valley or on Wall Street. But a new study of remittances sent home by Ghanaian migrants suggests that on average they transfer enough over their working lives to cover the amount spent on educating them several times over. The study finds that once remittances are taken into account, the cost of education would have to be 5.6 times the official figure to make it a losing proposition for Ghana.

的确，技术移民的教育和培训费有一部分是由他们的政府（通常是手头拮据的）承担的。有人称，穷国们因此应该反思他们究竟应该在高等教育上投入多少。例如，当大批毕业生最终都去了硅谷或是华尔街时，印度人就政府是否应该继续补贴印度技术研究院经常展开争论，印度技术研究院是精英工程学院。但是一项关于加纳移民汇款的新研究显示，平均而已，他们工作生涯中寄回的这些汇款足足是当初教育花费的好几倍。这项研究发现，一旦考虑汇款，对加纳来说，除非教育成本达到官方数据的5.6倍，否则它不会亏本。

There are more subtle ways in which the departure of some skilled people may aid poorer countries. Some emigrants would have been jobless had they stayed. Studies have found that unemployment rates among young people with college degrees in countries like Morocco and Tunisia are several multiples of those among the poorly educated, perhaps because graduates are more demanding. Migration may lead to a more productive pairing of people’s skills and jobs. Some of the benefits of this improved match then flow back to the migrant’s home country, most directly via remittances.

技术移民还可以通过一些微妙的方式来帮助他们贫穷的祖国。如果他们留在祖国的话，弄不好会失业。研究发现，在摩洛哥和突尼斯这样的国家，拥有大学学历的年轻人，他们的失业率是那些低学历者的好几倍，也许是因为大学毕业生对工作的要求更高。移民他国可以使得有技能的人找到更适合他们的工作，而他们的祖国就享受到了这所带来的部分好处，最直接的方式就是通过汇款。