Measuring inequalities in the public health workforce at county-level Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in China

Cai, Weiqin; Li, Chengyue; Sun, Mei; Hao, Mo

provincial staff density was 1.74, and the lowest was 0.49. The highest mean provincial health professionals' density was 1.48, and the lowest was 0.39. For field epidemiological investigators, the highest mean provincial health professionals' density was 0.83, and the lowest was 0.29. The ratio between the highest and lowest county density in each province was larger than the ratio between the highest and lowest mean provincial density, so the within-province inequality was substantially larger than between-province inequality ( Table 3) . Table 4 shows the decomposition of inter-county inequality by municipality, which differs from that by region and province. A comparison shows that betweenmunicipality inequality was more than twice as large as between-province inequality for most categories of PHWs. The absolute value of between-municipality inequality for field epidemiological investigators is approximately 2.4 times as large as that between-province inequality.