Financial incentives for return of service in underserved areas: a systematic review

David Bloom and Till Barnighausen ()
Additional contact information
Till Barnighausen: Harvard School of Public Health

PGDA Working Papers from Program on the Global Demography of Aging

Abstract: Of the 42 reviewed studies 33 investigated financial-incentive programs in the US. The remaining studies evaluated programs in Japan (five studies), Canada (two), New Zealand (one) and South Africa (one). The programs started between 1930 and 1998. We identified five different types of programs (service-requiring scholarships, educational loans with service requirements, service-option educational loans, loan repayment programs, and direct financial incentives). Financial incentives ranged from year-2000 United States dollars 1,358 to 28,470. All reviewed studies were observational. The random-effects estimate of the pooled proportion of all eligible program participants who had either fulfilled their obligation or were fulfilling it at the time of the study was 71% (95% confidence interval 60-80%). Seven studies compared retention in the same underserved area between program participants and non-participants. Six studies found that participants were less likely to remain in the same underserved area (five studies reported the difference to be statistically significant, while one study did not report a significance level); one study did not find a significant difference in retention in the same area. Twelve studies compared provision of care/retention in any underserved area between participants and non-participants. Ten studies found that participants were more likely to continue to practice in any underserved area (eight studies reported the difference to be statistically significant, while two studies did not provide the results of significance tests); two studies found that program participants were significantly less likely than non-participants to remain in any underserved area. Seven studies investigated the satisfaction of participants with aspects of their enrolment in financial-incentive programs; three studies examined the satisfaction of members of participants’ families with their lives in the undeserved area.

Keywords: Financial incentives; underserved areas; review (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-06
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/pgda/WorkingPapers/2009/PGDA_WP_43.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/pgda/WorkingPapers/2009/PGDA_WP_43.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/pgda/WorkingPapers/2009/PGDA_WP_43.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> http://hsph.harvard.edu/research/global-demography-aging/ [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://hsph.harvard.edu/research/global-demography-aging/)

Related works:
Working Paper: Financial incentives for return of service in underserved areas: a systematic review (2008)
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:gdm:wpaper:4309

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in PGDA Working Papers from Program on the Global Demography of Aging
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Cinzia Smothers ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).