Women Wait Longer

Longer wait times for women at coffee shops might be annoying but morally insignificant (see http://ideas.repec.org/p/mdl/mdlpap/0711.html), but longer wait times to see a medical specialist matter. A recent report by Statistics Canada shows that Canadian women were less likely than men to see a medical specialist within a month, Statistics Canada reported Wednesday. The agency’s report, Waiting time for medical consultations in Canada, 2007, is based on 5,515 people aged 15 or older who said they’d consulted a specialist about a new condition in the previous 12 months and reported a waiting. In the report, Carrière and co-author Claudia Sanmartin of the department’s health analysis division in Ottawa noted women were significantly less likely than men to see a specialist within a month. The report notes that gender wasn’t the only variable that made a difference. For men, the analysts said, wait times were longer for those who had lower household incomes. The researchers also found that among men, the odds of seeing a specialist within a month were twice as high for those who had immigrated more than 10 years earlier than for those born in Canada. Read more here.