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The Geography of Brain Drain in America [citylab.com]

 

Perhaps the biggest problem afflicting America is its widening geographic divide between the winners and losers of the knowledge economy. A raft of studies has documented the growing divergence between places based on their ability to attract, retain, and cluster highly educated and skilled workers and to develop high-tech startup companies.

Talented and skilled Americans are the most likely to move by far. While the overall rate of mobility among Americans has declined over the past decade or so, still, between one-quarter and one-third of U.S. adults have moved within the previous five years, a higher rate of mobility than just about any other country on the globe. But behind this lies a tale of two migrations: the skilled and educated “mobile” on the one hand and the less educated “stuck” on the other.

One consequence of this is that states as different as Ohio and Hawaiihave been considering initiatives to stem brain drain and hold onto their own talent. In fact, such policies date back at least to the late 1990s. Back in 1999, when I lived in Pittsburgh, economic-development officials there came up with the idea of “Border Guard Bob,” a uniformed sentinel who would patrol the region’s borders to convince talented local grads to stay—an initiative that quickly became the butt of jokes and was scuttled.

Now, a new report from the Social Capital Project of the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress takes a close look at the reality of brain drain across the 50 states. The report uses U.S. Census data from 1940 to 2017, and focuses on highly educated people in their post-college and post-graduate-school years—people between the ages of 31 and 40 who are either “movers” or “leavers,” heading off to different states, or “stayers” who continue to live in their home state. (Certain maps start at 1970. There is also  an interactive mapwith all of the data points.)

[To read more of this article, please click here.]

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