Global Health Workforce Labor Market Projections for 2030

Liua, Jenny X ; Goryakin, Yevgeniy ; Maeda, Akiko ; Bruckner, Tim ; Scheffler, Richard

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: labor misallocation;    health workforce;    global health;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-7790
RP-ID  :  WPS7790

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

In low- and middle-income countries,scaling essential health interventions to achieve healthdevelopment targets is constrained by the lack of skilledhealth professionals to deliver services. This paper takes alabor market approach to project future health workforcedemand based on an economic model that projects economicgrowth, demographics, and health coverage, and using healthworkforce data (1990-2013) for 165 countries from the WorldHealth Organization's Global Health Observatory. Thedemand projections are compared with the projected growth inhealth worker supply and health worker "needs" asestimated by the World Health Organization to achieveessential health coverage. The model predicts that by 2030global demand for health workers will rise to 80 millionworkers, double the current (2013) stock of health workers.The supply of health workers is expected to reach 65 millionover the same period, resulting in a worldwide shortage of15 million health workers. Growth in the demand for healthworkers will be highest among upper-middle-income countries,driven by economic growth and population growth and aging,resulting in the largest predicted shortages, which may fuelglobal competition for skilled health workers. Middle-incomecountries will face workforce shortages because their demandwill exceed supply. By contrast, low-income countries willface low growth in demand and supply, but they will faceworkforce shortages because their needs will exceed supplyand demand. In many low-income countries, demand may staybelow projected supply, leading to the paradoxicalphenomenon of unemployed ("surplus") healthworkers in those countries facing acute"needs-based" shortages.