Emigration of Swedish health professionals

• Main Authors: Hidalgo Arreola, Alfredo, Källström, Julia
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Internationella Handelshögskolan, Högskolan i Jönköping, IHH, Nationalekonomi 2010
• Subjects: Health professionals; labor migration; migration incentives; Economics; Nationalekonomi
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hj:diva-12152

There seems to be a gap in previous literature where economists and social scientists do not focus on factors driving emigration of health professionals between developed coun-tries. Although, there is a lot of literature that discusses emigration of health profession-als from developing towards developed countries, there are few previous studies of health professional emigration between developed to developed countries. This paper examines and analyzes factors which might be of importance in determining the direc-tion of emigration of health professionals between developed countries. The concept of health professionals in our study contains people with more than 3 years of education within the health and social welfare sector, not referring to any particular occupation such as nurses, doctors, dentist etc; or whether they are specialized in any area. This pa-per analyses factors that affect emigration of Swedish health professionals, using eco-nomic and social variables in a structured regression model. The results indicate that the percentage of Swedish health professionals is directly affected by factors of destination countries such as geographical proximity, GDP(PPP) per capita, income tax rate and co-workers encouraging development.