Embracing the Gift of Global Talent
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- Embracing the Gift of Global Talent
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Bibliographic details
- Authors: RUCHIR AGARWAL, INA GANGULI, PATRICK GAULE
- Published: March 1, 2021
Overview
- Talent can be born anywhere, but few places specialize in nurturing it. Talented individuals have pursued opportunities abroad for centuries.
- Since World War II, the United States has emerged as a hub for foreign talent, playing an outsize role in the global knowledge network of scientific activity.
- Immigration policies in the United States may have significant implications for scientific activity both in the United States and the rest of the world.
- Recent disruptions in cross-border flows (COVID-19 pandemic and changes in immigration policies) have reduced mobility of talented youth—for example, the number of student (F-1) visas issued by the United States fell 70 percent between fiscal years 2019 and 2020.
- On September 25, 2020, the Department of Homeland Security proposed a rule to end the “duration of status” on visas for foreign students and exchange visitors (and journalists), which would make it much harder and more expensive for this group to study in the United States.
Evidence and data sources
- The analysis uses hand-curated data sets of talented individuals: Nobel laureates, Fields medalists, and IMO participants.
- A newly collected survey of 610 recent IMO participants includes information on universities applied to, admitted to, and attended, and hypothetical choice questions about funded versus unfunded offers to assess the role of funding constraints.
- Career histories of Nobel Prize winners and Fields medalists are combined with life histories of IMO medalists and the survey data.
Main findings
- Global scientific output of future generations could be up to 42 percent higher if talented youth around the world had equal opportunities to nurture their abilities.
- Migrants to the United States represent 21–33 percent of frontier knowledge producers (Nobel Prize winners and Fields medalists).
- Migrants to the United States are significantly more productive than migrants to other countries, even after accounting for adolescent measures of talent:
- Migrants to the United States are four to six times more productive than stayers.
- Migrants to the United Kingdom are more than twice as productive as stayers.
- The US productivity premium is driven roughly equally by the extensive margin (migrants are more likely to choose academic careers when they migrate to the United States) and the intensive margin (among those who choose academic careers in math, migrants to the United States are more productive than those who remain in their home country).
- A developing-economy penalty exists throughout the talent distribution:
- A participant born in a low-income country produces 34 percent fewer mathematics publications and receives 56 percent fewer mathematics citations than an equally talented participant from a high-income country.
- Financing constraints substantially limit migration of top talent to the United States:
- Among developing economy IMO participants in the survey, 66 percent dream of studying in the United States, while only 25 percent manage to do so.
- Forty percent of respondents report that the availability of financial assistance was “very important” or “extremely important” to their decision to attend their particular undergraduate institution rather than a different one; this share rises to 56 percent for developing economy participants.
Quantitative interpretation and mechanisms
- The estimated up-to-42 percent increase in global scientific output stems from two factors:
- Talented individuals are much more productive in the United States than in their home country.
- Many talented individuals aspire to move to the United States but cannot because of financing constraints.
- Scholarships and other financial support for top foreign students—particularly those born in developing economies—could materially increase global scientific output by enabling mobility to environments that better nurture their abilities.
- Improvements in domestic research institutions are also important to nurture talent that prefers or must remain in-country.
Policy implications and recommendations
- Reduce immigration barriers to the United States for top foreign talent, including policies that address financing constraints (for example, scholarships and funded offers).
- Expand scholarships and funded opportunities for top foreign students, especially those from developing economies.
- Invest in better research institutions in more countries to nurture domestic talent and support those who prefer not to or cannot migrate.
- Global policymakers and the scientific community should take timely action to ensure equal opportunities for talented individuals to accelerate the global advancement of science and knowledge.
Conclusions
- The pandemic and restrictive immigration policies have added new barriers to academic migration, depriving talented individuals of opportunities to develop their abilities and potentially leading to fewer discoveries.
- Addressing both international mobility constraints and domestic capacity-building can increase global scientific output and ensure talented youth can realize their potential.
Source: Embracing the Gift of Global Talent – IMF F&D
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