Paper Title
Skilled Migration and Health Outcomes in Developing Countries
Abstract
Many studies have found that health outcomes decline when health professionals leave the country, but do such
results remain consistent in gender- and income-disaggregated skilled migration? The present study revisits this topic but
allows for associations of skilled migration with mortality and life expectancy to differ between male and female, and
between low- and high-income countries. Using a panel of 133 developing countries as source and 20 OECD countries as
destination from 1980 to 2010 allowing the coefficient on emigration across different education levels to differ, this study
finds the negative effect of high-skilled emigration on health outcomes. Such effect is more pronounced for high-skilled
female migration than those for male and for low-income countries than for middle-and high-income countries. Results also
show that such adverse effect is larger for African countries than non-African ones. However, the low-skilled migration
appears to be insignificant to affect health outcomes in developing countries. Thus, skilled migration is detrimental to
longevity in developing countries but unskilled migration is not.
JEL classification - F22, I15
Keywords - skilled migration, mortality, life expectancy, health outcomes