I don’t want to wade too much into the Trump administration’s war against Harvard and other universities. Still, as someone whose alma mater is a global top 10 university that ranks only a few places behind Harvard, I think I need to point out what kind of damage a country suffers if it loses highly skilled students and graduates to other countries. And, of course, as I always do here, and as academics are prone to do, I do this using data and an academic study.

Samuel Dodini and his collaborators exploited the rapid increase in oil prices between 2004 and 2009 to estimate the impact of doctors leaving a country on mortality rates. They looked at Norway and Sweden, two neighbouring countries with free movement of people between them. However, while Norway has a significant amount of oil, Sweden does not. When oil prices entered a secular boom in the 2000s, wages in Norway rose significantly faster than in Sweden. This created a strong incentive for Swedish doctors to move to Norway and work there.

Before 2004, approximately 1,500 Swedish doctors would commute to Norway each year to find employment there. With the oil boom, the number of Swedish nurses moving to Norway doubled, while the number of doctors moving across the border rose by about 50% by 2011.

The brain drain in the Swedish medical sector has reduced the provision of healthcare in Sweden, where healthcare is free (which is beneficial for the study because we don’t have to worry about barriers to access due to high healthcare costs). Between 2001 and 2014, mortality rates in Sweden increased by 0.8 deaths per 1,000 inhabitants due to this shortage of doctors. Most of the mortality increase was concentrated among older people.

Increase in Swedish mortality rates due to a reduced number of doctors

Source: Dodini et al. (2025)

Deaths increased primarily due to acute illnesses (i.e. requiring immediate medical attention) like cardiovascular events, infections, and respiratory diseases. Deaths from cancer, endocrine and digestive illnesses or illnesses of the muscular and nervous system did not increase significantly.

And of course, deaths weren’t distributed evenly across the population. Poor households and people with low education (which is highly correlated with income) suffered a much larger increase in mortality rates than the average household. And for high-income households, mortality rates even declined slightly because they could afford additional private medical care that compensated for the deterioration in public health services.

Increase in Swedish mortality rates due to a reduced number of doctors

Source: Dodini et al. (2025)

I am sure that other studies focus on the impact of brain drain in different sectors (I am aware of a few examining poor countries in Africa), but what I find important about this study is that it focuses on two high-income, highly developed countries. And even in this best-case scenario, reducing the number of highly skilled professionals kills people. Literally.