Brain Drain Cost or Brain Bank Return

At the Connecting the Dots Conference at Southwestern College in Winfield, KS we discussed growing your own businesses with local entrepreneurs as an explicit strategy. A group from Wichita showed the cost of losing our young people in rural America to large cities. Their figure was that it cost $300,000 to raise a child into an adult. They showed Wichita losing about 20% of its young people or 1,700 people each year. That is a net loss of $510 million!

What is the lifetime value of keeping those young people in your community? In Winfield, Kansas the average wage is $26,631. For a 40 year career that is over $1 million for each young person.

Think of all of the young people who leave rural towns like Winfield! Just think of the Brain Bank of talent that grew up in your town and isn’t living there today. Look at the return on investment that could be earned by recruiting them back home.