EclectEcon

Did Canadian Medskools admit too many females over the past few decades? Yes, in some ways, it can plausibly be argued that Canada does have too many female doctors. This conclusion is based on several important observations (courtesy of discussions with colleague Brian Ferguson):

• Canadian Medskools limit enrolment with the result that, at current wages and prices, we have far fewer physician services provided than customers would like to "buy".
• Time and again, the evidence from fee-for-service data is that female physicians opt for more leisure in the work-income-leisure trade-off; on average, they provide fewer services per year than do male physicians.

Given these two pieces of evidence, it looks as if we would probably have more physician services and fewer shortages in Canada if medskools had admitted only male medical students.

Of course, a better solution might have been and would certainly be to admit more of both males and females to medskools.