This month’s cover is about Malaysia’s brain drain; and what is fascinating is how old – and yet how current – the story reads.
Indeed, we should be talking about a Brain Drain Trap, as we do about the Middle Income Trap. And we should be worrying just as much – Malaysia's GDP per capita has stayed at about 30% of the US’s since 1994. No improvement in 20 years.
“Trap” is not necessarily a good analogy here because it suggests an unchanging status. In reality, traps are gently sloping downwards. There is really never an unchanging status quo.
Where the brain drain is concerned, there is hardly enough foreign inflow to offset the shock to the economy caused by the outflow of educated Malaysians. This means that for a long time now, the country has had to make do – and has had to get along as best it could within what perhaps should be called the Middle Talent Trap.
