Incentives and Dynamics in the Ethiopian Health Worker Labor Market
The supply and geographic distribution of health workers are major constraints to improving health in low-income countries. A number of recent studies have highlighted the shortage of skilled health workers in many settings (World Health Organizati...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Publication |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank
2012
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/main?menuPK=64187510&pagePK=64193027&piPK=64187937&theSitePK=523679&menuPK=64187510&searchMenuPK=64187283&siteName=WDS&entityID=000333037_20100723013057 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/2487 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/5951 |
| Summary: | The supply and geographic distribution
of health workers are major constraints to improving health
in low-income countries. A number of recent studies have
highlighted the shortage of skilled health workers in many
settings (World Health Organization [WHO], 2006), the impact
this has on health outcomes (Anand and Barnighausen, 2004),
and the risk this poses for the achievement of the Millenium
Development Goals (WHO, 2006; joint learning initiative,
2004). However, there remains limited evidence about what
sorts of policies will attract nurses and doctors into
medical training, improve the retention of trained health
workers, and encourage them to work in rural areas where
problems of inaccessibility of services are most acute.
Finally, our predictive results are based on a discrete
choice experiment that was part of the questionnaire. This
component of the study enables us to estimate the value that
doctors and nurses place on different job attributes, and
how they vary across individuals. Providing high quality
housing would increase physician labor supply to about 27
percent, which is equivalent to paying a wage bonus of about
46 percent. Doubling wages paid to nurses for work in rural
areas outside cities increases their labor supply from 4
percent to 27 percent, while the non-wage attribute that is
most effective in inducing them to relocate to rural areas
is the quality of equipment and drugs. The same impact could
be achieved by increasing rural nursing wages by about 57
percent for men and 69 percent for women. |
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