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

Over the past ten years, the number of veterinarians in rural areas hasdeclined in many countries, giving rise to concerns about the geographical coverageof livestock health care. However, very little scientific work has been devoted toveterinarian shortage areas. This paper aims to shed light on this issue. Using econo-metric models based on count data, we test the effect of geographical and socio-economic characteristics of French living zones on the number of new veterinariansestablished in 2014. This work generated several findings. First, our study emphasisesthe importance of taking into account the heterogeneity of veterinarians. Indeed, theestimation results highly depend on the type of animals treated and gender. Second, weobserved that the location of food animal practitioners depends on the characteristics oflocal 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 ofveterinarian shortages may be higher for areas specialised in animal production otherthan bovine (sheep, goats). They also suggest that maintaining public services may be akey issue for attracting food animal veterinarians in remote rural areas. Finally, ourresults show that veterinarians tend to cluster, which suggests that new veterinarianschoose to establish themselves as employees or associates in already existing veterinaryoffices in order to share costs and minimise risks.