The gender composition of the medical profession is changing rapidly in many parts of the world, including Mexico. We analyze cross-sectional and longitudinal data on sex differences in physician employment from household employment surveys. The results suggest that Mexico is a particularly...

This study examines unemployment and underemployment of physicians in urban Mexico. The framework is relevant to countries with substantial increases in physician supply. Based on surveys from 1986 and 1993, the study analyses physician performance in the labour market as a function of...

Low and middle income countries (LMICs) share a common, emerging, and largely unrecognized challenge: the burden of increasingly prevalent chronic and non-communicable diseases. This emerging challenge compounds the difficulty of responding to the backlog of disease and illness associated with...

A holistic approach to schooling in developing countries-considering schooling in conjunction with labor force work, child care, and other household responsibilities-is necessary to construct policies that will encourage greater educational attainment, especially for children and youth in poor...

This paper argues that a more complex view of work and schooling is critical to poor countries as they implement policies to increase educational attainment. In this analysis of 12, 17-year-old girls and boys in urban Mexico, we expand the traditional approach in two dimensions by (1) moving...

Cancer is exacting severe costs from societies that are wholly unprepared to address it, and this toll will become even heavier in future years. By 2020, cancer is expected to kill more than twice as many people worldwide as it did at the turn of the millennium. In low- and middle-income...

One of the most important challenges facing health systems is population aging. International estimates suggest that the aging process will increase the cost of health by 41% between 2000 and 2050, so that health spending could reach 11% of work GDP (United Nations, 2002)

The Mexican Health System is facing huge challenges and at the same time has very important opportunities to solve them; one of the major paradoxes is that coexists a remarkable human resources waste along with the health services for wide sections of the population (SSA, 2001)

Governments use fiscal policy to encourage healthy behavior. The instruments of government for this purpose are taxes and subsidies, and direct provision of certain health services for free or at subsidized rates. Examples of fiscal policies for health are taxes on tobacco and alcohol, subsidies...