Who are the health workers and where are they? : revealed preferences in location decision among health care professionals in the Philippines

Health human resource (HHR) is critical in the delivery of health care services. However, the available evidences on their geographic distribution and availability remains quite limited in the scope of cadres studied, i.e., mostly physicians, and in global reach, i.e., mainly in English-speaking developed countries. This paper aims to bridge this gap in the literature by assessing the supply of a broader set of health care workers in the Philippines, and analyzing the different factors that affect their location decision. Similar to other countries, we find indications that HHRs in the Philippines are more likely to locate in regions where their earnings potential may be greatest, and in proximity to communities where they were trained. However, we don’t find empirical support that HHRs from ethnolinguistic minorities are more likely to work in areas with higher ethnic concentrations. We also document large disparities in HHR density that is masked by national-level statistics. Indeed, data over the last twenty-five years show increasing polarization in the spatial distribution across all cadres of HHRs in the Philippines.