Mais Médicos Program and Human Capital in Argentina: Brain Drain in the Health Sector?

Abstract

The Mais Médicos program (2013) tried to attract physicians to rural and peripheral areas of Brazil based on the international immigration of these professionals. Its creation generated widespread concern in the border areas of Argentina due to the potential brain drain (emigration of qualified professionals) in the health sector. In this paper we provide evidence on this topic. The identification strategy exploits the plausibly exogenous timing in the implementation of the program and the different levels of proximity of the Argentine provinces with respect to Brazil. The results suggest that, despite the widespread belief of a brain drain towards Brazil, the availability of physicians did not show a significant reduction, after the program, in the border areas. This is robust against multiple checks and placebos. From a territorial equity perspective, there is no evidence that the creation of the program has contributed to widening regional disparities in Argentina (i.e. fewer physicians in the poorest region).

International Borders, Integration and Economic Development: Evidence from Argentina

“…Intuitively, the higher the standard deviation, the higher the inequality observed in the data (Ciaschi, 2021;González, Cantero, & Szyszko, 2022;Mendez & Santos-Marquez, 2021;Montalvo, Reynal-Querol, & Muñoz, 2021;Seminario & Palomino, 2022;Valenzuela Vega, 2022). In the context of measuring economic inequality through satellite night luminosity, the standard deviation refers to the variation in night luminosity among different pixels within a district.…”

“…The records of the satellite images provide a luminosity scale ranging from 0 to 63, with each value having a precision of 30 arc seconds (approximately 1 km² at the equator) 2) , and each pixel storing data in 6 bits (i.e., up to 64 1) Other studies have employed satellite imagery for inequality analysis. For example, González, Cantero, and Szyszko (2022); Mendez and Santos-Marquez (2021); Montalvo, Reynal-Querol, and Muñoz (2021); Seminario and Palomino (2022); Valenzuela Vega (2022). 2) According to Argentina's geographical latitude, the area represents 0.8 km² in the north, 0.32 km² in the south, positions).…”