Okeke Edward N
RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, USA. Tel: +1-412-683-2300. E-mail:
Health Policy Plan. 2014 Aug;29(5):603-14. doi: 10.1093/heapol/czt046. Epub 2013 Jul 26.
It is believed that low wages are an important reason why doctors and nurses in developing countries migrate, and this has led to a call for higher wages for health professionals in developing countries. In this paper, we provide some of the first estimates of the impact of raising health workers' salaries on migration. Using aggregate panel data on the stock of foreign doctors in 16 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, we explore the effect of a wage increase programme in Ghana on physician migration. We find evidence that 6 years after the implementation of this programme, the foreign stock of Ghanaian doctors abroad had fallen by approximately 10% relative to the estimated counterfactual. This result should be interpreted with caution, however, given the sensitivity of the results to changes in model specification.
人们认为低工资是发展中国家医生和护士移民的一个重要原因，这导致了要求提高发展中国家卫生专业人员工资的呼声。在本文中，我们首次提供了一些关于提高卫生工作者工资对移民影响的估计。利用经济合作与发展组织16个国家外国医生存量的综合面板数据，我们探讨了加纳的一项工资增长计划对医生移民的影响。我们发现有证据表明，该计划实施6年后，国外加纳医生的存量相对于估计的反事实情况下降了约10%。然而，鉴于结果对模型设定变化的敏感性，应谨慎解释这一结果。
