04 Sep Female Physicians Continue to Earn Less than Male Physicians

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Seth A. Seabury, PhD Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics, University of Southern California, Los Angeles   MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Seabury: We studied the trends in the earnings of male and female physicians in the US from 1987-2010 using nationally representative data from the Current Population Survey (CPS).  We found that, while the number of female physicians grew significantly, male physicians continue to have significantly higher earnings than female physicians.  The difference in the median earnings of male physicians compared to female physicians actually increased from $33,840 in 1987-1990 to $56,019 in 2006-2010, though the difference across years was not statistically significant.  Our approach controlled for differences in hours worked, so earnings gap was not driven by differences in work hours, though it could be explained by other factors we did not observe in our data (e.g., specialty choice). Looking at other occupations in the US health care industry, the male-female earnings gap was smaller for pharmacists and registered nurses and decreased over time, but was large and increased for physicians assistants.  On the other hand, our numbers indicate that outside of the health care industry, the male-female earnings gap fell by more than 45%.  Even though significant gender inequality persists across the US, female physicians do not appear to have benefited from the relative gains that female workers outside the health care industry have.