Earlier this week, Chad Moutray, Chief Economist of the Office of Advocacy for the SBA, released a research paper titled Educational Attainment, “Brain Drain,” and Self-Employment: Examining Interstate Mobility of Baccalaureate Graduates, 1993-2003.
The paper makes use of the Dept. of Edu’s 2003 Baccalaureate and Beyond (B&B) database. Moutray investigates the employment and location of self-employed and wage and salary workers 10 years after graduation. Some of the findings include:
- academic achievement (grades) is more likely to indicate higher mobility than choice of major
- states with “knowledge economies” are more likely to attract these highly mobile college graduates
- having strong ties to home detracts from mobility – actually owning a home ‘crushes’ mobility for self-employed
You can download this interesting and important paper via the SBA’s Office of Advocacy and here’s the link to the December 8 press release.
December 11th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Thank you, David. This report matches my experience with the brain-drain from Europe to the USA.
And would you agree that “having children” is even more crushing than home-ownership?
December 13th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
[...] December 13, 2009 · Leave a Comment The post below was originally posted at Richard Florida’s Creative Class Exchange. [...]
December 13th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Yes. I will have to double check Moutray’s results, but family does inhibit mobility.
However, from my memory (and i have to double check the findings), home ownership was the most limiting (of mobility) when it came to self-employed.
However, according to the findings, being married with kids does not effect the self-employed. That is quiet interesting (vs. having a home). Apparently self-employed have an easier time moving people than physical assets. (p.17 of the full report)