The Effectiveness of Interventions to Increase Employment in Education and Healthcare: A Systematic Literature Review

Lara Fleck (), Melline Somers (), Tom Stolp (), Wim Groot (), Frits Merode () and Ralph Vries ()
Additional contact information
Lara Fleck: Maastricht University
Melline Somers: Maastricht University
Tom Stolp: Maastricht University
Wim Groot: Maastricht University
Frits Merode: Maastricht University
Ralph Vries: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

De Economist, 2025, vol. 173, issue 1, No 1, 45 pages

Abstract: Abstract Both the healthcare and education sector suffer from considerable staff shortages. In the healthcare sector, shortages are particularly prominent for nurses, while the education sector experiences significant teacher shortages. In this systematic literature review, we examine the effectiveness of interventions and policies to reduce staff shortages in healthcare and education in high-income countries. We focus our analysis on studies that apply research designs that allow for causal inference to inform policymakers about the effectiveness of interventions. In total, we include 85 studies that meet our inclusion criteria. Out of these studies, 71 studies focus on teachers and 14 on nurses, and 72 of the retrieved studies were conducted in the US. The majority of studies examine the impact of financial incentives and a large share of these studies report positive effects on teacher employment. Moreover, different types of interventions that invest in workers’ human capital show predominantly positive effects on employment. Interventions that equip nurses with skills to better cope with the stressors of their profession seem to be particularly effective. The same holds for policies that increase the scope of practice for nurses. Finally, effective school leaders are better capable of retaining (high-quality) teachers.

Keywords: Labor shortage; Teachers; Nurses (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 I20 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10645-024-09440-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:decono:v:173:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1007_s10645-024-09440-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10645/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10645-024-09440-8

Access Statistics for this article

De Economist is currently edited by Rob Alessie, Bas ter Weel, Casper van Ewijk, Jan C. van Ours and Frank de Jong

More articles in De Economist from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().