How Does Occupational Licensing Affect Entry into the Medical Field? An Examination of EMTs

Aaron Yelowitz and Samuel J. Ingram ()
Additional contact information
Samuel J. Ingram: Federal Housing Finance Agency

No 14071, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The COVID‐19 pandemic has led to temporary suspensions of many occupational licensing laws, especially for health care professionals, in an effort to manage surges in health care demand. The crisis highlights more general concerns about occupational licensing laws, yet convincing empirical evidence on the degree to which such laws have inhibited entry into health care professions is scarce because most studies must rely on cross‐sectional variation to identify such effects. In this study, we indirectly examine how occupational licensing affects the choice to become an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) by exploiting the demand‐side shock from the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Although demand‐side shocks should increase the likelihood of becoming an EMT relative to other similar non‐medical professions, this effect should be moderated in states with higher barriers to entry. Using a large number of individuals from the American Community Survey (ACS) who work as either EMTs or in a similar non‐medical field (protective services), we find suggestive evidence that while the demand‐side shock from the ACA increased the likelihood of being an EMT, this effect was substantially moderated by more stringent occupational licensing laws. Although the effect for the full sample is marginally significant, the estimated effects are substantially larger for individuals under age 40, who are presumably more flexible in choosing a career path. Evaluated at the average number of days to complete EMT training and the pre‐treatment uninsured rate, the implied effects for young individuals in the most careful specification suggests virtually complete offset; the ACA demand‐side shock would increase entry by 18 percentage points, while occupational licensing restrictions reduce entry by a similar magnitude.

Keywords: Emergency Medical Technicians; Occupational Choice; Occupational Licensing; Emergency Services (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I13 J44 K31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2021-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-law and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published as 'How does occupational licensing affect entry into the medical field? An examination of emergency medical technicians' in: Southern Economic Journal, 2024, 91 (1), 38 - 61

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp14071.pdf (application/pdf)

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:iza:izadps:dp14071

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().