Female Physicians Earn Less Than Their Male Colleagues

Researchers at Harvard Medical School (Boston, MA, USA), the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research (Cambridge, MA, USA), and other institutions analyzed salary information data for 10,241 academic physicians (34.7% women) at 24 public medical schools in 12 U.S. states with salary information published online, in line with Freedom of Information laws. They then linked the data with detailed information on sex, age, years of experience, faculty rank, specialty, scientific authorship, funding, clinical trial participation, and Medicare reimbursements.

The results showed that female physicians had lower mean salaries (USD 206,641) than male ones (USD 257,957). The sex differences persisted after multivariable adjustment, with an absolute difference of USD 19,878. Women physicians were less likely than men to be full professors, they tended to be younger, and more women specialized in internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, and pediatrics. Woman also had fewer total publications, were less likely to have funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and less likely to have conducted a clinical trial. The study was published on July 11, 2016, in JAMA Internal Medicine.

“Our use of publicly available state employee salary data highlights the importance of physician salary transparency to efforts to reduce the male-female earnings gap,” concluded lead author Anupam Jena, MD, PhD, of Harvard Medical School, and colleagues. “Significant sex differences in salary exist even after accounting for age, experience, specialty, faculty rank, and measures of research productivity and clinical revenue.”

Related Links:
Harvard Medical School
U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research