Daniel H. de Vries, Stephanie Steinmetz, Kea G. Tijdens
Abstract
This study used the global WageIndicator web survey to answer the following research questions: (RQ1) What are the migration patterns of health workers? (RQ2) What are the personal and occupational drivers of migration? (RQ3) Are foreign-born migrant health workers discriminated against in their destination countries?
Of the unweighted data collected in 2006-2014 from health workers aged 15-64 in paid employment, 7.9 % were on migrants (N = 44,394; 36 countries). To answer RQ1, binary logistic regression models were applied to the full sample. To answer RQ2, binary logistic regression was used to compare data on migrants with that on native respondents from the same source countries, a condition met by only four African countries (N = 890) and five Latin American countries (N = 6356). To answer RQ3, a multilevel analysis was applied to the full sample to take into account the nested structure of the data (N = 33,765 individual observations nested within 31 countries).
RQ1: 57 % migrated to a country where the same language is spoken, 33 % migrated to neighbouring countries and 21 % migrated to former colonizing countries. Women and nurses migrated to neighbouring countries, nurses and older and highly educated workers to former colonizing countries and highly educated health workers and medical doctors to countries that have a language match. RQ2: In the African countries, nurses more often out-migrated compared to other health workers; in the Latin American countries, this is the case for doctors. Out-migrated health workers earn more and work fewer hours than comparable workers in source countries, but only Latin American health workers reported a higher level of life satisfaction. RQ3: We did not detect discrimination against migrants with respect to wages and occupational status. However, there seems to be a small wage premium for the group of migrants in other healthcare occupations. Except doctors, migrant health workers reported a lower level of life satisfaction.
Migration generally seems to 'pay off' in terms of work and labour conditions, although accrued benefits are not equal for all cadres, regions and routes. Because the WageIndicator survey is a voluntary survey, these findings are exploratory rather than representative.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 4. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 08 July 2016.
All research outputs
#7,778,510
of 25,374,647 outputs
Outputs from Human Resources for Health
#797
of 1,261 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#119,631
of 368,667 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Human Resources for Health
#23
of 28 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,374,647 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 69th percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,261 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 13.3. This one is in the 36th percentile – i.e., 36% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 28 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 14th percentile – i.e., 14% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
