Tag: well-educated

Doctors are increasingly marrying other well-educated people with careers, and that may be exacerbating the shortage of doctors in already underserved rural areas of the U.S., suggests new research.

More than half of U.S. doctors are now married to other highly educated people, and those marriages are tied to a 38 percent reduced odds of the doctors working in rural underserved areas, researchers report in JAMA.

"It’s making it increasingly difficult for rural areas to attract physicians," said lead author Douglas O. Staiger of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.