第六季第27集：为何“人才流失”并非移民故事的全貌

高技能人才移民可以通过多种可能的积极渠道对原籍国的发展产生正面影响。

There is a wealth of possibilities of possible positive channels through which the emigration of high skilled individuals can positively impact development back home.

欢迎收听Vox Dev Talks节目，我是蒂姆·菲利普斯。当前许多发达国家正在制定移民政策，专门旨在吸引最具才华的移民。而低收入国家那些受过教育的技术人才外流，可能会导致国内出现人才流失风险，从而延缓或阻碍发展进程。

Welcome to Vox Dev Talks. My name is Tim Phillips. Many developed countries are creating immigration policies at the moment. They're designed specifically to attract the most talented migrants. Emigration of those skilled, educated citizens from low income countries, well, that's going to risk causing a brain drain at home, which might delay or might hobble development.

《科学》期刊最新发表的一篇文章对此假设进行了验证。新里斯本大学商学院卡蒂娅·鲍蒂斯塔与阿默斯特学院卡罗琳·西奥哈拉德斯是该文的合著者，她们现在都来到了节目现场。卡蒂娅，欢迎你。

A new article in the journal Science puts that assumption to the test. Katia Bautista of Nova School of Business and Economics and Caroline Theoharides of Amherst College are two of the authors of that article and they both join me now. Katya, welcome.

感谢邀请，蒂姆。这是个非常难得的机会。

Thank you for having us, Tim. It's a very wonderful opportunity.

卡罗琳，也向你问好。

And Caroline, hello as well.

你好，蒂姆。

Hello, Tim.

卡罗琳，一些发达经济体已接近充分就业状态，各类劳动力都出现短缺。为何这些国家在政策上只试图吸引最优秀的移民人才呢？

Caroline, advanced economies, some of them are pretty close to full employment. They're short of all types of workers. Why are they trying to attract only the best and the brightest immigrants in their policies?

移民政策的关键目标之一就是缓解关键劳动力和技能短缺问题。正如你所指出的，这些短缺存在于各个技能层面。而我认为，引进这些高技能移民通常在政治上更容易被接受。

One of the key goals of immigration policy is to reduce critical labor and skill shortages. And so as you point out, these shortages exist for lots of levels of skill. And I think it's often the case that it's more politically palatable to bring in these highly skilled immigrants.

那么卡佳，为什么另一端的人才们会选择成为移民，离开他们的祖国、家园，或许还有家人呢？

And Katya, why is it that at the other end, talented people choose to become migrants to leave their countries of origin and their homes, their families perhaps?

嗯，我认为这很大程度上取决于具体情况。这取决于他们来自哪些国家，在国内拥有哪些机会，同时也取决于他们的个人背景。因为我们知道，很多时候——我是说，这些人才移民大多是寻求海外国际经验的年轻人，这可能与他们在国内的情况不同，特别是如果他们来自高收入国家。这种情况也可能适用于中等收入经济体，他们既追求国际化职业发展，也寻求更好的职业前景和薪资待遇。如果看低收入国家，情况就有所不同，因为那里可能缺乏让他们施展才华的基本条件。

Well, I think that depends a lot. That depends on the countries they are coming from, the opportunities they have at home, but then also on their individual profiles. Because we know that many times, I mean, most of these talented migrants are young people that are looking for international experience abroad, and this could be something that, well, maybe it's just different from what they have at home, especially if they are coming from higher income countries. This could apply also in middle income economies where, I mean, they are looking for these international carriers, but they are also looking for much better opportunities in terms of career and wages. If we look at low income countries, then the situation is a bit different because there they may lack conditions for them to exert their their jobs.

比如IT工程师或医疗专业人员，他们想离开不仅因为国外薪资更高，还可能因为在国内连施展才华的基本条件都不具备。所以这真的因人而异。我们讨论的是一个非常广泛的现象，涉及众多不同的个人决策。

I mean, if you think of IT engineers or medical professionals, maybe they want to leave not only because wages are higher abroad, but also because they don't have basic conditions to use their talents back home. So it will depend a lot, really. We are talking about a very broad phenomenon here and many different individual decisions.

是的，这是个广泛现象。但如果我们讨论的是最优秀、最有才华的人，他们会移民到其他国家从事哪些类型的工作呢？

Yes, it is a broad phenomenon. But if we're talking about the best, the most talented, what sort of jobs are we talking about that they will emigrate to do in other countries?

我认为涵盖各类职业。媒体关注点常集中在医疗工作者身上，考虑到这对原籍国当地医疗可能产生的外部性影响，这点尤为明显。嗯。但广义上说，学界定义往往比较模糊——这也是我们论文试图阐明的一点——我们通常将任何受过高等教育的劳动者都视为高技能人才。

I think we're thinking about all sorts of jobs. Much of the media attention is often on medical workers. I think this is particularly true given the potential for externalities on local health in the country of origin. Mhmm. But broadly, I think literature's often been a bit vague, and this is one of the points we try to make in our paper is that really we've broadly thought about this as any tertiary educated worker is highly skilled.

没错。是的。

Right. Yeah.

但我们的研究还试图深入探讨的一点是，我们确实基于广泛的研究基础，尝试分析不同教育水平下的估算数据。这些人是高学术成就者吗？他们拥有学士学位还是博士学位？以及他们从事哪些职业？

But one of the things our research also tries to discuss well, we do discuss this broad base of research is we try to think about estimates that depend on education level. So are these high academic achievers? Do they have a bachelor's degree? Do they have a PhD? And then what are the occupations?

我们是在讨论发明家和科学家吗？是在考虑医疗专业人员？还是工程师？因为我认为，明确我们所关注的高技能劳动者具体类型，对于政策影响以及对原籍国的潜在影响都至关重要。因此我们虽然从宏观角度思考这个问题，但也希望听众能从具体政策影响的维度进行考量。

Are we thinking about inventors and scientists? Are we thinking about medical professionals? Are we thinking about engineers? Because I think we think that specifying the type of high skilled workers specifically that we're considering is gonna be really important for the policy implications and also for the potential impact on origin countries. So we're thinking about this broadly, but we wanna encourage all of our listeners to think about this specifically in terms of the potential policy implications.

既然如此，就由你来设定讨论框架。我们是否了解这种潜在人才外流的规模？其趋势是否在扩大？以及主要涉及哪些输出国和接收国？

Given that, I'll let you set the terms. Do we know how large this potential brain drain outflow is and if it's increasing and from which countries to which countries?

所以

So

总体而言，低收入国家18%的学士学位获得者现居经合组织国家。这个比例相当高。具体数据因国家和技能类别而异——例如埃塞俄比亚，91%的博士学位持有者都在海外，高达91%。

broadly, 18% of all individuals from low income countries with a bachelor's degree are living in the OECD. So that's a pretty high number. This varies by country and skill category. So I can give you some examples. So for example, in Ethiopia, ninety one percent of PhD holders are abroad ninety one percent.

相比之下德国这个比例只有3%，可见各国差异显著。佛得角40%的学士学位获得者在海外，而撒哈拉以南非洲整体比例为13%，高收入国家仅为4%。全球范围来看，高技能移民来自所有国家，但数量最多的是印度、中国、菲律宾和墨西哥。

If we compare that to Germany, that's three percent. So really a lot of variation in terms of how you think about this. Cape Verde has 40% of bachelor's degree recipients abroad compared with 13% for Sub Saharan Africa more broadly or 4% for high income countries. So there's a lot of variation across countries. Globally, if we think about highly skilled immigrants, they come from all countries, but the highest numbers in terms of levels are from India, China, The Philippines, and Mexico.

这些国家也是全球各技能层次移民的最大来源地，高技能群体同样如此。关于增长趋势，2002至2020年间，非经合组织国家出生的高等教育移民比例从28%升至38%。此外我认为还应该关注专业领域而不仅是原籍国——比如新冠疫情就凸显了本就存在的医疗工作者短缺问题。

These are also the largest centers of migrants globally at any level of skill, but it also applies for high levels of skill. I think you asked about increases as well. So in terms of increases between 02/2020, the share of migrants with tertiary education rose from 28% to 38% for those born outside the OECD. But I also think about this a lot in terms of like the field, not just the country of origin. And so I think one example to highlight is that, like from the COVID nineteen pandemic, this highlighted the already present shortages of health care workers.

因此我们看到的是，例如美国监管机构——我认为英国也是如此——在这一时期加速了对国际资格的认可。于是我们看到特定职业领域及其人才流动机制因应潜在短缺发生了相当迅速的变化。

And so what we saw was, for example, US regulatory bodies, I think we saw this in The UK as well, expedited recognition of international qualifications during this period. And so we saw pretty rapid changes in terms of particular occupations and how these flows worked to given these potential shortages.

这篇文章题为《人才流失还是人才增益》。请向我解释这个问题：你们在文章中试图回答的核心问题是什么？

This article is called brain drain or brain gain. Explain this question to me. What question are you trying to answer in the article?

我们的研究起点是大多数人会理所当然地认为存在人才流失。当你看到高技能人才离开某国时，就会直接认定该国正在流失人力资本。这种理论假设往往缺乏对实际证据的深入考察，甚至忽略了人才增益的理论可能性——这正是我们研究的出发点。

Our starting point is the fact that most people just assume brain drain. When you see the highly skilled living a country, you just assume that country is being depleted of human capital. And then people assume it theoretically. They don't really look, too much at the evidence or even at the theoretical possibilities of brain games. And so I guess that's the starting point.

我们首先希望提出一个理论假设：高技能人才外流实际上可能通过某些渠道使原籍国获益。举例来说——让我们先从理论层面探讨再转向实证——当受教育者离境时，可能反向激励国内民众增加教育投资，最终导致母国受教育人口净增长而非减少。另一个我们探讨的理论可能是：庞大的高学历海外侨民群体不仅会汇回更受关注的金融汇款，还会输送非物质性汇款。这指的是他们传回诸如政治参与、性别平等等新规范，这些都能通过改善制度环境来促进母国经济发展。更直接的理论收益还包括：归国移民带来新技能和创业资金，或是海外侨民促进的跨国联系最终吸引更多外商直接投资和贸易往来。

We wanted, first of all, to put forward the theoretical hypothesis that, well, there are actually potential channels through which the origin country may gain when high skilled individuals leave the country. For example, it may be that, okay, and let's start theoretical and then we'll look at the evidence, but it could be, for example, that when educated people are leaving the country, they actually incentivize people back home to invest more in education and that the net result is more educated people in the home country as opposed to less. It is also a theoretical possibility that we investigate that when you have a large educated diaspora, you are actually sending back not only financial remittances, which is more recognized, but immaterial remittances. And what we mean by this is that people are sending back different norms, say, for political participation, for gender equality that actually can promote economic development back home because these better institutions can open up avenues for economic development. And then you have even, I mean, more direct potential theoretical positive gains from, for example, return migrants that come back with new skills, with savings that are more entrepreneurial.

回到侨民话题，他们还能促进最终为母国创造更多外商直接投资和贸易联系的纽带。因此存在大量可能的正向渠道，高技能人才外迁能通过这些途径积极影响母国发展。我们在论文中先理论化这些假设，继而综述最新严谨证据，证明这些机制确实在不同情境中都得到了实证支持——这就是我们的研究基点。

Or going back to the diasporas, they can also promote links that will end up creating or attracting more foreign direct investment to the home country, more trade linkages. So, there is a wealth of possibilities, of possible positive channels through which the emigration of high skilled individuals can positively impact development back home. What we do in the paper is we first put out these hypotheses theoretically, and then we review the most recent rigorous evidence that shows that, well, actually this has taken place. All of these channels have empirical support in many different contexts. So that's our starting point.

这并非否认实际挑战的存在——显然挑战是存在的——但核心在于：切勿一见高技能人才外流就武断判定必然出现人才流失。

This is not to say that there could not be challenges, which there are obviously, but this is the starting point. Just do not assume there will be a brain drain when you see highly skilled people leaving a country.

你们收集的这些证据，是来自现有关于移民模式的研究吗？

The evidence that you're capturing from this, this is from existing studies on migration patterns, is

是吗？没错，正是如此。

it? Yes, exactly.

过去二十年间，我们看到越来越多关于这些主题的研究，试图验证高中移民通过哪些积极渠道能对原籍国发展产生正面影响。我们的做法是首先筛选研究对象——专注于完成高等教育的技能型移民。明白吗？因此大多数研究都以高技能移民为基础，然后聚焦于采用最严谨实证方法（许多是实验性或准实验性）的最新研究。

In the last twenty years, we have seen more and more studies about these topics, trying to test these different positive channels through which high school demigration can affect positively the development in origin countries. What we did here is we try to select. First, we are focusing on the immigration of the highly skilled defined as, those that could complete tertiary education. Okay? So most of the studies, we base ourselves focusing on highly skilled immigration, and then we focus on the most recent studies using the most rigorous empirical methodologies, a lot of them experimental or quasi experimental.

那么首先，能否举例说明潜在移民接受培训或教育的动机如何惠及原籍国？是否有研究证实了这一点？

So first of all, examples of how the incentives for would be immigrants to train or study has helped the origin country. Is there research that shows that to be true?

我与Paulo Abarcar关于菲律宾护士的研究或许是个有力例证。当美国2006年2月扩大护士签证配额时，菲律宾护理专业入学人数激增。2000年至2006年2月期间，美国将外籍护士签证增加了约26,000个，但菲律宾因此新增了约114,000名持证护士，最终使菲律宾本土护士数量净增约86,000人。

One helpful example might be from some of my work with Paulo Abarcar on Filipino nurses. When The US expanded visas for nurses in February, there was really dramatic enrollment response in Filipino nursing programs. Between 2000 and 02/2006, The US expanded the number of visas for foreign nurses, and this expansion was by about 26,000 visas. But what we see in The Philippines is that this new opportunity encouraged many, many more people to train as nurses, and this resulted in almost a 114,000 newly licensed nurses over this period. So what this led to was an increase of about 86,000 nurses in The Philippines.

我们的论文表明，这确实显著增加了菲律宾医院实际雇佣的护士人数。需要强调的是，菲律宾案例中教育资源的及时供给对实现这种入学率增长至关重要。若无这种供给响应，我们发现的'智力增益'效应可能无法实现。因此考量具体国情及教育体系灵活性非常关键。

In our paper, we showed that this actually led to a meaningful increase in the number of individuals who actually were employed as nurses in The Philippines, so working in Filipino hospitals as nurses. One thing I wanna highlight, though, here is that in the case of The Philippines, it was actually crucial for this response that the supply of schooling responded to enable this increase in enrollment. Okay? And so I think without such a supply response, the brain gain effects that we find might not be possible. Thinking about the specific context and how flexible the education system is is really important to think about.

类似地，我们的合著者Garav Khanna有篇论文显示：当美国放宽H-1B签证限额引进更多IT工作者时，印度反而获得了更多IT专业人才，由此催生了印度本土IT产业的蓬勃发展。

Similarly, our coauthor on this paper, Garav Khanna, has a paper where he shows that in India, when the h one b cap in The US was relaxed to allow more IT workers, India actually gained more IT professionals. And so there was this IT sector that built up in India in response to this.

接下来谈谈侨汇——这个移民故事中广为人知的环节。侨汇何时能产生智力增益效果？因为我们通常认为侨汇只是用于增加消费或补贴家用。当然这很重要，但这未必属于智力增益范畴。

So let's also talk about remittances because that's a very well known part of the story of migration. When do these remittances have a brain gain impact? Because we usually think about them as being sent home just to, for example, increase consumption to help the family at home. Now, can see that that's very important, but it's not necessarily a brain gain impact.

首先，我们试着定义一下人才流入，对吧？我想我们讨论的最直接影响是激励人们接受额外教育。对于低收入国家而言，这些用于消费的汇款实际上可能是人们能够求学的必要条件，对吗？

Let's try to define brain gain first of all, right? I guess the most direct impact that we were talking about was incentives for people to acquire additional education, right? And if we think about low income countries, it may be that these remittances that you are sending that are full in consumption are actually a necessary condition for people to be able to study. Right?

嗯哼。所以这些

Uh-huh. So these

汇款能让他们获得充足的食物、体面的住所，不必打工而可以专心学习。因此这些可能正是他们能够求学的先决条件。正如卡罗琳强调的，宏观层面上，支持人们获得教育机会的基础设施建设至关重要。但如果我们关注个体是否决定继续深造，即便被归类为消费的金融汇款也极其重要——它们让人得以求学，还能购买教材和支付其他教育相关费用。

are the remittances that will allow them to have proper food, proper housing, and not having to work instead of studying. So these actually may be condition for them to be able to study. So Caroline was highlighting how important at the more macro level it is that you have infrastructures that support the possibility of people to acquire education on supply side. But now, maybe if we look at those individuals that are deciding to make the decision to study further or not, financial remittances can actually be very important even in what we label as consumption because they will allow people to study. They may also allow people to say buy the books and all the other expenses associated with education.

早期文献也证实了这点：金融汇款对教育支持起着重要作用。我们讨论的新文献关注高技能移民带来的额外教育激励效应，但这些基础条件本身也是移民和汇款创造的。

Even the early literature shows exactly this. Financial remittances can play an important role in supporting education. So we are talking about the newer literature on the incentive effects to acquire extra education because of the immigration of the highly skilled, but these may be the basics that are also enabled by migration and remittances.

除了这些消费层面的益处，我认为汇款还常被用于投资。有最新证据表明，当移民收入出现正向波动时，会促进教育投资和小微企业发展。

In addition to some of these benefits from consumption, I think remittances are also often invested and we see that remittances are often invested in education. So there's been some recent evidence that shows that when there are positive shocks to migrant income, this can lead to the promotion of investment in education and in small enterprises.

我刚才聚焦教育影响，但事实上金融汇款还支持着人才流失国的其他积极发展。比如直接的创业发展，还有更间接的规范传递——当人们经济宽裕不再为温饱发愁时，就会更敢于要求政治问责、推动制度改良，吸收新规范促成政治社会变革。因此我认为金融汇款为人们投资教育、推动政治社会变革提供了重要基础条件。

I was just focusing on the impact on education, but the truth is that financial remittances do support many other positive developments back home that are brain drained. I mean, if you think about entrepreneurial developments, that's an obvious one, but there are more indirect ones. So we were discussing this, say, transmission of norms. When you think about people getting more demanding for more political accountability for better institutions, if they have the economic welfare to not be worried about getting food on the plate on their plates every day, they'll be freer to absorb these new norms, to make changes, political changes, societal changes. So financial remittances, I think, do provide a lot of important basic conditions for people then to invest in education, to promote political and societal change.

所以说金融汇款确实至关重要。它们是移民带来的最显著效益，但并不意味着其重要性低于本文探讨的其他隐性人才增益渠道。

So financial remittances are really important. They are the more obvious benefit of emigration, but it does not mean that they are not, still very important, in addition to all the other less obvious brain game channels that we exploit in this article.

其他国家的侨民网络，移民往往能过得不错，建立自己的生活和经济独立。他们对祖国的影响，是指对祖国的投资回流吗？还是侨民也能带来更大的智力回流效应？

Diaspora networks in other countries, very often, immigrants can do quite well, and they establish lives and financial independence. Their influence on their home country, is that about investment back into the home country? Or can the diaspora have a bigger brain gain impact as well?

我认为侨民确实能带动金融投资，这可能通过某些汇款效应实现，就像卡佳刚才谈到的

I think the diaspora can certainly lead to financial investment, and this can happen either through some of the remittance effects, like exactly what Katya was just talking about

当然。

Sure.

或者通过对原籍社区的更广泛投资。说到卡佳最后提到的观点，我认为侨民还能促进思想和知识的分享，也能建立贸易联系。有个很好的例子可以说明：有证据表明，当移民网络规模更大时，移民来源国会获得更多外国直接投资。还有证据显示移民网络能提高移民原籍国的制造业产出。

Or through broader investment in the communities of origin. Going to the last point that Katya was just saying, I think the diaspora can also lead to the sharing of ideas and knowledge. It can also lead to trade linkages. So I think one nice example to think about here is that there's some evidence that shows that when there are larger migrant networks, there's more FDI to migrants origin countries. There's also other evidence that shows that migrant networks can increase manufacturing output in the migrants country of origin.

我认为这些侨民还能促进进出口商之间的联系，帮助开拓国外新型市场。但另一方面，我们也要考虑商业发展可能因移民类型而异。例如，来自冲突地区或政治高压地区的技术工人，可能不太愿意在祖国投资。在这些情况下，技术劳动力的直接流失可能是主导效应。当然不一定，但鉴于我们现有证据多来自菲律宾、墨西哥等较发达的大型经济体，这方面可能需要更多研究证据。

And I think these diasporas can also facilitate connections between importers and exporters and enable access to new types of markets abroad. I think on the other hand, we also might wanna consider that business development may vary with the type migrant. And so skilled workers who might be departing from conflict zones or places with lots of political repression, for example, might be less likely to invest at home. And so the direct loss of this skilled labor could be a dominant effect in those settings. Not necessarily, but I think it's probably something we need more evidence on since a lot of the evidence we have is coming from large economies, a bit more well developed like The Philippines or Mexico or something like that.

部分移民会回到祖国，他们可能带来金融投资。但他们能否也带回在移民过程中积累的知识？我想到管理知识、创业技能这些对祖国有用的东西。

Some migrants will return to their home countries and they can bring with them financial investment. But can they also bring knowledge that they have accumulated from migration to other countries? I'm thinking about management knowledge, entrepreneurial skills, which will be useful in a home country.

有个很好的例子是印度IT行业工作者，他们在签证到期后回国。我们看到这导致美国将IT生产外包到印度。同样地，这些归国者带回了新观念和见解。

A really nice example for this is thinking about immigrant IT sector workers who returned home from India when their visas expired. And so Right. What we see here is that their return led to subsequent offshoring of IT production from The US to India. I think similarly, these returnees bring back ideas. They bring back insights.

他们从国外带回的实践能够广泛增强这一知识基础。我们在专利活动、学术研究生产力等情境中已观察到这种现象。我想强调的是，这并不必然需要回归移民，因为通过网络远程即可实现。Zoom、WhatsApp等工具的兴起，所有这些技术创新使得联系更加紧密，即便没有实际的回归移民。

They bring back practices from abroad that can just broadly enhance this knowledge base. And so we've seen this in context such as patenting activity, productivity of academic research. And I wanna highlight that this doesn't necessarily require return migration because this can happen remotely through networks. The rise of Zoom and WhatsApp and things like that. All of these, like, technological innovations have led to these connections being tighter even without that actual return migration.

另一个值得强调的例子发生在中国。各省曾通过提供激励措施吸引海归人才。研究表明，这些吸引海归的省份中，当地企业因获得具有海外经验的人才而改善了管理实践，从而提高了利润。另一方面，潜在代价是人才外流可能导致失去这些潜在发明者，抑制经济增长与创新。这确实凸显了在推动创新者移民时，需制定能最大化本地创新效益的政策。

One other example that's maybe nice to highlight is in China. Provinces were trying to attract returnees by providing incentives. And what they show is that these resident companies in these provinces that attracted returnees got people with foreign experience, and they were able to improve management practices and have higher profits as a result. On the other hand, there's, like, potential cost to this is that losing these potential inventors through brain drain could inhibit economic growth and innovation. And so I think this really underscores the need to consider policies that maximize local innovation when we promote innovator immigration.

那么我们该如何制定政策，才能最大化本地创新的目标，并充分利用这些跨国发展、增强知识储备的网络？

So how can we develop policies that are gonna maximize these goals of local innovation and and really take advantage of these networks that are developing across borders and enhancing the knowledge

当前政策。对于担忧人才外流、正设法阻止移民的政策制定者，您从这篇文章及个人研究中得出的核心建议是什么？

policy now. What would be the message that you have from this article and from your individual research for policymakers who are worried about brain drain and are trying to think of ways to discourage immigration?

出发点与我们的疑问一致：不要预设人才外流。不要假设人员离开就必然损害原籍国。我们通过不同情境的严谨证据表明，高技能移民完全有可能使原籍国受益。但这绝非必然结果，明白吗？

The starting point is the same as our question, which is do not assume a brain drain. Do not assume that because people are leaving, the origin country will be harmed. I think we present enough rigorous evidence from different contexts that shows that there is surely a possibility that high skilled immigration will benefit origin countries. This is however not guaranteed at all. Okay?

因此还需更多努力。我们不能简单宣称'不要阻止移民，因为这必定对原籍国有利'。这里存在注意事项，需要讨论，需要政策制定者采取措施以确保能从高技能移民中获益。但我们传达的核心信息是：通过多种渠道，原籍国获得'人才红利'的可能性确实存在。

So there is more work to do. We cannot just say, don't discourage immigration because this will be good for sure for your origin country. So there are some caveats here, some discussion to be had, some work for policymakers to do in order for them to be able to reap the benefits of high skilled immigration. But the main message that we convey here is the possibility of brain gains, a benefit for origin countries is surely there through a variety of channels.

您提到这如何扩大教育覆盖面并激励更多人追求教育。对于那些未移民、已投资教育却从未出国的人，这些技能如何得以运用？

Your point about how this expands education and gives many more people an incentive to pursue education. How can these skills be employed for people who do not migrate, who have invested in their education, but then never leave the country?

我认为高技能移民实际上通过一种方式让那些留在国内的人受益，那就是政策制定者意识到这些高技能移民有机会出国工作，享有良好条件，这会形成一种压力促使国内条件改善。是的，至少他们应该这么做。明白吗？所以从这个角度看，这为政策制定者提供了一个机会和动力，去改善那些暂时选择留在国内的高学历工作者的境遇。

I think one way through which the high skilled immigrants are actually making things better for those that stay home with their skills is that, well, actually the fact that policymakers realize that, well, these high skilled immigrants have an opportunity to go abroad to work, they have good conditions, it will create some pressure for these conditions to be better at home. Yeah. Or at least they should. Okay? So if you think of it in this way, there could be here an opportunity and an incentive for policymakers to make things better for the highly educated workers that did decide for time being to stay back home.

明白吗？如果他们真想从这些留在国内的受教育者身上获益，就应该对他们进行投资。我认为移民现象将向国内传递一个强有力的信息。

Okay? If they really want to benefit from these educated people that are staying in the country, they should also invest in them. And I think that's a powerful message that the fact that people are immigrating will bring back home.

关于这对原籍国政治和社会规范的影响，卡蒂亚在这方面做了大量研究，我会让她谈谈政治规范方面。我和其他人也做过关于生育观念和生殖健康决策变化的研究。我们近期的部分研究表明，移民目的地国家的生殖健康政策及相关规范会以某种方式回传，从而降低生育率。这不仅促使移民自身采用现代避孕措施，还会对原籍社区产生溢出效应。我认为这不仅关乎教育层面，更可能对当地经济结构转型产生广泛影响。

Thinking about the impacts that this has on political and social norms back in the countries of origin, Katya has a lot of work that I'll let her talk about on the political norm side. I've done some work and others have done work thinking about changes in fertility norms and reproductive health decisions. And so some of the work that we've done recently has shown that reproductive health policies abroad and the destination countries for these migrants, these norms are actually transmitted back in such a way that they lower fertility. They encourage modern contraceptive adoption of not just the migrants themselves, but spillovers to their local communities. And so I think that that's not necessarily just on the education side, but I think we can think about that having broad implications for even structural change within these local economies.

目前我们有充分证据表明移民是推动政治变革的力量。这其实不算新发现，像赫希曼这样的经典作家早就讨论过'退出与发声'理论——移民无论选择留居或离开祖国，都在政治变革中发挥作用。最新证据显示，当人们离开后仍与家乡保持联系时，他们确实会传递不同行事方式的可能性。

At this point, we have plenty of evidence on how migrants are a force for political change. This is actually not that recent. We have, like, classical authors like Hirschman talking about exit and voice. The role that migrants have in political change when they decide to stay in their home country to leave. I think the most recent evidence, what it shows is that when people leave, they keep in touch with, people back home, they actually do transmit the possibility of doing things in different ways.

这里需要特别注意文献中强调的一个关键点：效果很大程度上取决于移民去向。如果移民前往民主运作更完善、民众更积极表达诉求、更要求政治问责的国家，这些特质都可能回传并促进母国良性政治变革。但这不是绝对的，也有相反案例——比如移民前往女性权利不受尊重的国家后，也会将保守观念传回母国。我们从中认识到，移民是传递政治社会规范的重要渠道。

And here, there is an important caveat that has been highlighted in the literature, which is it depends a lot on where migrants are going. So, if migrants are going to places where democracies function better, where people are more active vocalizing their demands, where they are more demanding in terms of political accountability, all of these things can be transferred back home and they can promote political change for the better back home. This is not universal in the sense that there are examples of the opposite, of migrants going to countries where say female rights are not as respected, and they also do transmit this back home and they become more conservative. I think what we learn here is that migrants are powerful channels to transmit political and social norms.

政策是否应该设法吸引这些移民返回祖国？

Should policy be trying to attract these migrants back to their home countries?

这个问题恐怕没有简单答案。但关键在于，比起非要吸引人们回国，更重要的是确保国内具备良好条件，使国家能从那些选择移民的人身上获益。这关联到卡罗琳之前提到的教育基础设施等问题——要创造环境让人们若决定接受更多教育时能够实现。这点非常重要。

There is no easy answer for your question, I guess. But what is important here is that more than necessarily trying to attract people back home is to make sure that there are good conditions at home so that the country can benefit from those that decide to emigrate. Okay. So this has to do with what Caroline was referring to before, say, having the educational infrastructures, the environment in which people, if they do decide to invest in more education, they can do so. So this is a very important one.

有一点我必须说明，由于我们对此了解有限，因此能说的也不多，那就是我们需要更多针对较小、较低收入国家的研究。目前，我们已经有一些关于中等收入国家的研究，但应该更多关注低收入国家，这类障碍在这些国家往往更为突出。此外，我们还需着眼于更长的时间跨度，因为为了获得一项能明确建立因果关系的可靠研究，我们常常需要观察重大冲击。然而，重大冲击有时引发的变化并不典型，或无法直接套用于日常生活中更为持续发生的移民现象。因此，我们也需要更多证据，以及更多的政策实验。

One thing that I should say that we do not know about and hence we can say less is that we need more research that looks at smaller, lower income countries. By now, we have some research on middle income countries, but we should have more on low income countries where this kind of barriers tends to be stronger. We also need to look more at longer time horizons, because many times for us to achieve a well identified study where we can be confident about establishing a causal relationship, we look at big shocks. But big shocks sometimes induce changes that are not so typical or that we can automatically transfer to the kind of emigration that is happening every day in a more constant manner. So here we also need to have more evidence and say, more policy experiments.

我想更直接地回答你的问题。如果政策制定者决定要吸引更多移民回流，这绝对是我们能够测试并衡量其影响的事情。在这个长期框架下，我们需要准确理解这些影响，不仅针对特定人群，还要考虑随时间推移的一般均衡效应。我的意思是，我们需要了解更多，以便能更全面地回答你的问题。

I would say that, okay, answering more directly to your question. If policymakers decide that they want to attract back more immigrants, well, that would be something that we could definitely test and try to measure the impact of. And in this long time framework, trying to understand exactly what are the impacts, not only very specific for those people, but more general equilibrium over time. And I mean, trying to learn more so that we can then have more to say in answer to your question.

我也有类似的想法，与其纠结于是否应该让人们回流，不如思考通过激励未实现的移民可能带来的人力资本存量增加。我认为无论针对哪个人群，关键障碍之一在于如何衡量人才回流带来的福利收益，以及这些新人力资本在来源国能否得到充分利用。我之前提到的菲律宾研究显示，持证菲律宾护士数量大幅增长。但如果你与当地人交谈，他们会告诉你许多菲律宾医院仍报告医护人员短缺。

I think similarly, rather than thinking about, you know, should we get people to return or should we just think about the increase in the human capital stock that might've happened through incentivization of migration that isn't realized. I think one of the key barriers, whichever population you're thinking about, is thinking about the welfare gains from brain gain and how well this new human capital can be utilized in the country of origin. The work that I mentioned earlier in The Philippines shows substantial gains in the number of licensed Filipino nurses. But if you talk to people in The Philippines, they'll still report that lots of Filipino hospitals report shortages of health care workers.

是的。

Yes.

因此我认为，许多受过护理培训、获得护理学位的人——他们可能因此取得了之前没有的大学学历——实际上可能留在菲律宾却选择从不从事护理工作。他们常抱怨当地医院工资低、工作条件差。所以尽管我们的研究显示医疗工作者存量增加了，国家却未必真正受益。现在我们需要思考的是：有哪些政策构想？如何测试它们以最优方式将这些工作者融入当地经济，从而充分获取人才回流的全部效益。正如Katya所说，关于如何通过各种政策行动最大化人才回流效益以提升福利的研究确实少得多。

And so I think that many of these people who trained as nurses, who got an education as a nurse, who now have a college degree they may not have attained before, they may actually remain in The Philippines and choose never to work as a nurse. They often report low wages, really poor working conditions in local hospitals. And so while what we show is that the stock of medical workers is increased, the country may not actually reap the benefits of this. What we really need to think about now is what policy ideas are there and how can we test them to think about how to best integrate these workers into the local economy so that we can capture the full extent of this brain gain. I think in general, there's a lot less research, as Katya was saying, about the effectiveness of these various policy actions to maximize brain gain so that it's welfare enhancing.

因此或许可以考虑创新性的教育资助方式，比如通过来源国与目的地国之间的全球技能伙伴关系，或是更好地调动海外侨民资源——无论他们是否回国。我认为这些都很有前景，但需要严谨测试，嗯...让这些来源国真正能够利用其受教育劳动力基础扩大的优势。但如何实际操作才能实现福利提升呢？

And so thinking about maybe, like, innovative ways to fund education through things like global skills partnerships between origin and destination countries or, like, how we can better engage the diaspora whether they return or not. I think these are all have a lot of promise, but we need to think about rigorously testing these so that Mhmm. These origin countries really can take advantage of the fact that they've increased the base of educated workers. But how do we actually make this work in a way that's welfare enhancing?

几周前我们采访了Jonas Alamou，他创立了埃塞俄比亚Love Grass。他就是我们讨论这类事物的绝佳范例——他在欧洲和英国建立了自己的事业，但后来决定投资埃塞俄比亚并在那里创业。他提到的一点是：这相当困难。在创业和扩大规模过程中，他遇到了各种日常运营问题。

A few weeks ago, we spoke to Jonas Alamou, who set up Love Grass, Ethiopia. He is a great example of the sort of thing that we're talking about. He made a career for himself in Europe and in The UK, but then decided that he wanted to invest in Ethiopia and build a business there. One of the things he said about that is it was pretty difficult to do that. He ran into all sorts of just day to day problems in building and scaling a business.

他当时表示这是一个巨大挑战，因为他并不缺乏人才或愿意努力工作的人，只是实际操作起来很困难。那么，这是否又是一个政策层面的挑战——如何让企业家更容易在本国投资创业，从而充分利用这种‘人才回流’效应？

And he was saying that that's a huge challenge because he wasn't short of talent or people who wanted to work hard. It was just difficult to do that. Again, is this a policy challenge just to make it easier to invest in businesses for entrepreneurs to build businesses in their home country to take advantage of that brain gain effect?

完全正确。我认为这是基于现有证据需要思考的问题之一。我们在这些中等收入且规模较大的国家看到了这种现象。但在限制更多、冲突更频繁或经济更脆弱、民主制度不够健全的地区，这会如何运作？

Absolutely. I think that that's one of the things that I think about in terms of where we have this evidence. We have it in these middle income countries that are relatively large. How is this gonna work in places where there are more restrictions, where there's maybe more conflict, or the economy is more fragile? There are less strong democratic institutions.

我们能看到同样的效果吗？当经济极不稳定时，可能就缺乏投资本土企业或吸引外商直接投资的动力。因此，政府需要考虑如何确保侨汇或侨民投资能以有意义且高效的方式回流，而不被官僚程序所阻碍，这将使移民所在富裕国家与母国之间的资金流动产生更大影响。

Are we gonna see these same effects? Maybe there's not an incentive to invest back in businesses or for foreign direct investment when the economy is much less stable. And so thinking about the ways the government can ensure that these remittance flows or diaspora investment can flow back in a way that's meaningful and that's effective and isn't caught up in red tape is gonna allow this to be a much more impactful impactful transfer between wealthy countries where the migrants may be located and back home again.

这是个引人入胜的话题，我们还有很多可以探讨的内容。不过还是感谢你今天分享这些见解。谢谢你，卡佳。

It's a fascinating story, and there is so much more that we could talk about. Thank you for talking about it today, though. Thank you, Katya.

谢谢你，蒂姆。

Thank you, Tim.

也谢谢你，卡罗琳。

And thank you, Caroline, as well.

谢谢你，蒂姆。

Thank you, Tim.

阅读那篇文章，标题是《人才流失还是人才增益？高技能国际移民对原籍国的影响》。作者阵容庞大，包括Katya Batista、Daniel Han、Johannes Haushofer、Gaurav Khanna、David McKenzie、Ahmed Mushfiq Mabarak、Caroline Theoharidis和Dean Yang，他们在这个领域做了大量研究。文章当然发表在2025年3月的《科学》杂志上。这是一场Vox Dev Talk的讨论内容。

Read that article, it is called Brain Drain or Brain Gain? Effects of High Skilled International Emigration on Origin Countries. And the authors, there are a lot of them, covering quite a lot of work on this Katya Batista, Daniel Han, Johannes Haushofer, Gaurav Khanna, David McKenzie, Ahmed Mushfiq Mabarak, Caroline Theoharidis, and Dean Yang. It is published in Science 03/2025, of course. This has been a Vox Dev Talk.

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The best way to make sure you don't miss an episode, well, follow us wherever you get your podcasts. You will find us there. Our past episodes, as always, are at voxdev.org where you also find articles about the topics we feature. And if you like what you hear, please tell someone else about us. Leave us a review as well.

VOXDEF Talks由Talk Normal制作。助理制作人是Megan Bieber，编辑是Andre Zargarian。感谢Foxdev的Oliver Hany和Iman Siddiqu。

VOXDEF Talks is a Talk Normal production. The assistant producer is Megan Bieber, and our editor is Andre Zargarian. Thanks to Oliver Hany and Iman Siddiqu at Foxdev.