Christopher M. Whaley is a policy researcher in health care at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California.
Tina Koo is a research programmer in health policy at the RAND Corporation.
Health Aff (Millwood). 2021 Dec;40(12):1856-1864. doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.2021.00461.
Differences in income between male and female academic physicians are well known, but differences for community physicians and career differences in income have not been quantified. We used earnings data from 80,342 full-time US physicians to estimate career differences in income between men and women. The differences in annual income between male and female physicians that we observed in our simulations increased most rapidly during the initial years of practice. Over the course of a simulated forty-year career, male physicians earned an average adjusted gross income of $8,307,327 compared with an average of $6,263,446 for female physicians-an absolute adjusted difference of $2,043,881 and relative difference of 24.6 percent. Gender differences in career earnings were largest for surgical specialists ($2.5 million difference), followed by nonsurgical specialists ($1.6 million difference) and primary care physicians ($0.9 million difference). These findings imply that over the course of a career, female US physicians were estimated to earn, on average, more than $2 million less than male US physicians after adjustment for factors that may otherwise explain observed differences in income, such as hours worked, clinical revenue, practice type, and specialty.
男女学术医师之间的收入差距是众所周知的,但社区医师的收入差距和职业收入差距尚未量化。我们使用了 80342 名全职美国医师的收入数据,以估计男女医师之间的职业收入差距。我们在模拟中观察到的男女医师年收入差异在实践的最初几年增长最快。在模拟的 40 年职业生涯中,男性医师的平均调整后总收入为 8307327 美元,而女性医师的平均总收入为 6263446 美元——绝对调整差异为 2043881 美元,相对差异为 24.6%。外科专家的职业收入性别差异最大(相差 250 万美元),其次是非外科专家(相差 160 万美元)和初级保健医生(相差 90 万美元)。这些发现表明,在职业生涯中,经过调整其他可能解释收入差异的因素(如工作时间、临床收入、执业类型和专业)后,女性美国医师的收入平均比男性美国医师少 200 多万美元。