[The medical profession in urban areas of Mexico: demographic composition and social origin].

The medical profession in Mexico has experienced deep changes during the last decades. One of the most prominent has been the rapid growth in the number of physicians, who have tended to concentrate in the urban areas. In order to examine the sources of such increase, this paper analyzes the composition of the medical profession by age, sex, and social origin. The data come from the National Survey of Medical Employment, carried out in 1986, in which 604 physicians from a representative sample of households were interviewed in 16 of the main Mexican cities. The results show that the medical profession in Mexico is marked by a clear predominance of young people, which in turn is a sign of the recent explosion of graduates from medical schools. At the same time, there is a growing proportion of women. In contrast, the social origin of physicians has not experienced major changes, since most of them continue to come from the middle classes. The interpretation of these findings indicates that the growth in the number of physicians has not been due to a diversification of the social base of the profession, but to a greater demand for medical education among the middle classes and women. The changes experienced by the medical profession have a basic significance for the present and the future of health in México.