Gender pay gap widens among physicians

A recent study tracking trends in the earnings of male and female health care professionals in the United States from 1987 to 2010 finds that the gender pay gap among physicians, dentists, and other health care professionals has increased. Researchers used nationally-representative data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), adjusted for age, sex, race, hours worked, and state. Their analyses show that male physicians earned, on average, 25.3% (or $56,013) more than their female counterparts in 2006-2010. The pay gap for this demographic was 20% (or $33,840) in the late 1990s.

The researchers were not able to control for other factors that might influence the results, such as specialty, practice type, procedural volume, and insurance mix. They note however that "[w]hile it is important to study gender differences in earnings after accounting for factors such as specialty choice and practice type, it is equally important to understand overall unadjusted gender differences in earnings. This is because specialty and practice choices may be due to not only preferences of female physicians but also unequal opportunities. For example, are unadjusted earnings differences between male and female physicians due to a preference of female physicians for lower-paying specialties (eg, pediatrics or primary care) or do female physicians have less opportunity to enter higher paying specialties despite having similar preferences as male physicians?"