Inequality of Paediatric Workforce Distribution in China

Peige Song, Zhenghong Ren, Xinlei Chang, Xuebei Liu and Lin An
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Peige Song: Department of Child, Adolescent and Women’s Health, School of Public Health, Peking University, Beijing 100191, China
Zhenghong Ren: Department of Child, Adolescent and Women’s Health, School of Public Health, Peking University, Beijing 100191, China
Xinlei Chang: Department of Child, Adolescent and Women’s Health, School of Public Health, Peking University, Beijing 100191, China
Xuebei Liu: Department of Child, Adolescent and Women’s Health, School of Public Health, Peking University, Beijing 100191, China
Lin An: Department of Child, Adolescent and Women’s Health, School of Public Health, Peking University, Beijing 100191, China

IJERPH, 2016, vol. 13, issue 7, 1-13

Abstract: Child health has been addressed as a priority at both global and national levels for many decades. In China, difficulty of accessing paediatricians has been of debate for a long time, however, there is limited evidence to assess the population- and geography-related inequality of paediatric workforce distribution. This study aimed to analyse the inequality of the distributions of the paediatric workforce (including paediatricians and paediatric nurses) in China by using Lorenz curve, Gini coefficient, and Theil L index, data were obtained from the national maternal and child health human resource sampling survey conducted in 2010. In this study, we found that the paediatric workforce was the most inequitable regarding the distribution of children <7 years, the geographic distribution of the paediatric workforce highlighted very severe inequality across the nation, except the Central region. For different professional types, we found that, except the Central region, the level of inequality of paediatric nurses was higher than that of the paediatricians regarding both the demographic and geographic distributions. The inner-regional inequalities were the main sources of the paediatric workforce distribution inequality. To conclude, this study revealed the inadequate distribution of the paediatric workforce in China for the first time, substantial inequality of paediatric workforce distribution still existed across the nation in 2010, more research is still needed to explore the in-depth sources of inequality, especially the urban-rural variance and the inner- and inter-provincial differences, and to guide national and local health policy-making and resource allocation.

Keywords: paediatric workforce; health human resource; inequality; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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