Some Countries Are Sending Their Best

More than 50% of high-skilled persons born in some of the world’s poorest countries are living in the OECD

How significant a phenomenon is brain drain? The chart below plots the percentage of high-skilled persons born in a particular country who now live in the OECD against log GDP per capita for that country. The figures on the y-axis are from the IAB brain drain dataset (thanks to Emil Kirkegaard for notifying me about this). And those on the x-axis are from the World Bank. Both sets of figures are for 2010.

In order to keep the chart uncluttered, countries with population <500,000 and those for which the y-axis value is <25% are not shown.