Greek brain drain brilliant minds seeking better tomorrow: A critical investigation

Since 2009 the Greek economy has been hit by a severe crisis characterized by a large fiscal deficit and a huge unsustainable debt. The Greek crisis is also reflected to the unemployment rate that reached extremely high levels generating a number of issues concerning economic recovery, social cohesion and political stability. In this context, the available data exhibit the presence of the so called brain drain phenomenon. This study addresses the reasons of the high migration rate among tertiary educated Greeks, the reasons of migration, the criteria of country choice to move, demographic characteristics of migrants. This study investigates the brain drain phenomenon and tries to identify the impact of human capital loss concerning the prospects of the Greek economy recovery and its long-term growth. Given the fact that the Greek brain drain is a fairly new field of research, there are only a few studies that examine this phenomenon. This study aims to contribute to the further research of brain drain in Greece. An empirical study, through the distribution of a questionnaire takes place, and data are analyzed through application of descriptive statistics The findings show that the limited career of Greek brain drain brilliant minds seeking better tomorrow: A critical investigation. tions locally was the main reason for Greeks to move since the difficulty for finding a job existed even before the crisis. This implies that the economic crisis triggered migration but the main reason for moving abroad in fact was preexisting.