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Veterinarian shortage areas: what determines the location of new graduates?

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Abstract

Over the past ten years, the number of veterinarians in rural areas has declined in many countries, giving rise to concerns about the geographical coverage of livestock health care. However, very little scientific work has been devoted to veterinarian shortage areas. This paper aims to shed light on this issue. Using econometric models based on count data, we test the effect of geographical and socio-economic characteristics of French living zones on the number of new veterinarians established in 2014. This work generated several findings. First, our study emphasises the importance of taking into account the heterogeneity of veterinarians. Indeed, the estimation results highly depend on the type of animals treated and gender. Second, we observed that the location of food animal practitioners depends on the characteristics of local demand (size and type of animal production) as well as on labour supply factors (natural or urban amenities, public service facilities). The results suggest that the risk of veterinarian shortages may be higher for areas specialised in animal production other than bovine (sheep, goats). They also suggest that maintaining public services may be a key issue for attracting food animal veterinarians in remote rural areas. Finally, our results show that veterinarians tend to cluster, which suggests that new veterinarians choose to establish themselves as employees or associates in already existing veterinary offices in order to share costs and minimise risks.

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Notes

  1. The number of employed practitioners, although increasing, remains low, with only 36% of veterinarians. A majority of them work as independent practitioners, whether by themselves (18%) or as a partner in a practice (46%).

  2. The variances of\( {N}_{{\mathrm{FA}}_i} \), \( {N}_{{\mathrm{M}}_i} \), \( {F}_{{\mathrm{FA}}_i} \) and \( {M}_{{\mathrm{FA}}_i} \) nearly equal their means.

  3. The livestock unit (Unité Gros Bétail in French) is a variable built from coefficients, enabling one to compare the different animals with one another and to sum them up in a single number.

  4. This method used by the French Ministry of Agriculture is based on the calculation of regional coefficients relative to the standard gross output (Orientation technico-économique or OTEX in French).

  5. Base permanente des équipements (BPE)—2012, INSEE [producer], ADISP-CMH [disseminator].

  6. These are travel times by road and in off-peak hours, expressed in minutes, which were calculated using Odomatrix® software (Odomatrix, INRA UMR 1041 CESAER, from IGN Route 500®, RGC®).

  7. The variables Vet 60+ and Vet indep. show non-significant effects in any model. They also exclude, de facto from the regressions, the living zones without veterinarians before 2014 (i.e. 86 observations). Therefore, we decided to remove them from the final regression models. The complete models are presented in the appendices.

  8. We assume that the presence of zero in the first regime of the zero-inflated models relies mainly on the demand for veterinarian services and on the living area’s size. Thus, we have included the two variables livestock and population as covariates z i .

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Acknowledgements

This work is part of the VeTerra project funded by the European Union, the French State and the Regional Council of Auvergne. The authors are grateful to Jacques Guérin and the National Order of French Veterinarians for providing them with access to the veterinarian database. We would also like to thank Nadia Guiffant for her assistance in the design of the figures and the three anonymous reviewers for their useful comments and suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UMR Territoires, Agroparistech, Inra, Irstea, Vetagrosup, Université Clermont-Auvergne, 9 Avenue Blaise Pascal, CS 20085, 63178, Aubiere, France

    Stéphanie Truchet

  2. GREThA UMR CNRS 5113, Université de Bordeaux, Avenue Léon Duguit, 33608, Pessac, France

    Nicolas Mauhe

  3. CERFrance Horizon 63, 35 Rue du Pré la reine, BP9 Saint Jean, 63014, Clermont-Ferrand, France

    Marie Herve

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  1. Stéphanie Truchet
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  2. Nicolas Mauhe
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Correspondence to Stéphanie Truchet.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 6 Estimation results including all the professional environment covariates
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Table 7 Gender estimation results including all the professional environment covariates
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Truchet, S., Mauhe, N. & Herve, M. Veterinarian shortage areas: what determines the location of new graduates?. Rev Agric Food Environ Stud 98, 255–282 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41130-018-0066-9

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