The number of women in medical school now equals or surpasses men, but their average career earnings still fall nearly 25% short of male doctors’, according to new data shared in Health Affairs.
In fact, over the course of a 40-year career, female physicians will take home about $2 million less than males in the same position. The authors believe this is the first study to assign a dollar amount to the cumulative impact on earnings between these two groups working in community or academic medicine.
Further analysis revealed that income disparities sharply increase during the first years of practice and never even out.
“Our findings suggest that later in their careers, despite working full-time and having accumulated years of experience, women do not ‘catch up’ in terms of income; early income disparities persist,” Christopher M. Whaley, a healthcare policy researcher at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California, and co-authors explained in the December issue.
The findings are based on earnings data gathered from more than 80,000 full-time U.S. physicians who completed an ongoing survey from Doximity. This analysis covered 2014 through 2019.
During a simulated 40-year career, male doctors earned an average adjusted gross income of nearly $8.3 million compared with approximately $6.2 million for female providers. This gap held true after adjusting for factors such as hours worked, clinical revenue, practice type and specialty and other factors, the authors noted.
Additionally, disparities were largest for those working in surgical specialties ($2.5 million difference), followed by non-surgical specialties ($1.6M) and primary care ($0.9M).
Their results further underscore the differences between male and female physicians in academic medicine, but also expands the trend to community-based doctors, who are more representative of the overall U.S. physician population, according to Whaley et al.
The researchers offered up a few possible ways to address this pay gap.
“Increased salary transparency, protections via laws such as the Massachusetts Equal Pay Act, and systematic measurement and reporting of gender differences in income by organizations could help lessen income differences between female and male physicians,” they added. “To the extent that gender differences in income early in women’s careers persist throughout their careers, policies that eliminate those differences early on may lead to reduced differences over time as well.”
Read the entire study here.
Matt joined Chicago’s TriMed team in 2018 covering all areas of health imaging after two years reporting on the hospital field. He holds a bachelor’s in English from UIC, and enjoys a good cup of coffee and an interesting documentary.