Medical brain drain has been a policy concern in recent years when many countries are struggling with health workforce shortages. Some suggest that wealthy countries only exacerbate this problem by recruiting internationally trained health professionals. Little research has considered the impact of medical brain drain on child health in the sending society, and the few empirical analyses that exist find no conclusive evidence. To fill this gap, I test the underlying mechanisms through which medical brain drain may affect child health in scores of countries. I use a panel dataset covering 188 countries over the period 2000–2015. The findings from fixed-effects regression models suggest that medical brain drain negatively affects child health and that there is a curvilinear relationship between the two. The effects on child health are stronger in countries approximately in the middle of the medical brain drain scale, and weaker on both ends. The implications of the findings for policy and future research are highlighted.

中文翻译：

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探索2000–2015年间188个国家的医疗人才流失对儿童健康的影响

近年来，许多国家都在努力解决卫生人力短缺的问题，医疗人才流失一直是政策关注的问题。一些人认为，富裕国家只会通过聘请受过国际培训的卫生专业人员来加剧这一问题。很少有研究考虑过医疗人才流失对寄养社会中儿童健康的影响，并且存在的少量实证分析没有确凿的证据。为了填补这一空白，我测试了医疗人才流失可能影响许多国家儿童健康的潜在机制。我使用2000-2015年期间覆盖188个国家的面板数据集。固定效应回归模型的发现表明，医疗人才流失会对儿童健康产生负面影响，并且两者之间存在曲线关系。大约在医疗人才流失规模中等的国家，对儿童健康的影响更大，而两端的影响都较小。研究结果对政策和未来研究的意义进行了强调。