IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp7017.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

One Man's Blessing, Another Woman's Curse? Family Factors and the Gender-Earnings Gap of Doctors

Author

Listed:
  • Schurer, Stefanie

    (University of Sydney)

  • Kühnle, Daniel

    (University of Duisburg-Essen)

  • Scott, Anthony

    (Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research)

  • Cheng, Terence Chai

    (University of Adelaide)

Abstract

Using data from a new longitudinal survey of doctors from Australia, the authors test whether observed large gender-pay gaps among general practitioners (GPs) are the result of women's larger willingness to interrupt their careers. On average, female GPs earn A$83,000 or 54% less than male GPs. The difference between men and women with children is A$105,000, and A$45,000 for men and women without children. Of this gap, 66-75% is explained by differences in observable characteristics such as hours worked. The family gap emerges also within the sexes. Female GPs with children experience an earnings penalty of A$15,000-A$25,000 in comparison to women without children; almost 100% of this difference is due to observable characteristics such as hours worked and career interruptions. Male GPs with children experience a family premium of A$35,000 in comparison to men without children, indicating the presence of a breadwinner effect that exacerbates the gender-earnings gap.

Suggested Citation

  • Schurer, Stefanie & Kühnle, Daniel & Scott, Anthony & Cheng, Terence Chai, 2012. "One Man's Blessing, Another Woman's Curse? Family Factors and the Gender-Earnings Gap of Doctors," IZA Discussion Papers 7017, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
  • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7017
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp7017.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Deborah J. Anderson & Melissa Binder & Kate Krause, 2002. "The Motherhood Wage Penalty: Which Mothers Pay It and Why?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(2), pages 354-358, May.
    2. Cobb-Clark, Deborah A. & Tan, Michelle, 2011. "Noncognitive skills, occupational attainment, and relative wages," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 1-13, January.
    3. Elder, Todd E. & Goddeeris, John H. & Haider, Steven J., 2010. "Unexplained gaps and Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 284-290, January.
    4. Fortin, Nicole & Lemieux, Thomas & Firpo, Sergio, 2011. "Decomposition Methods in Economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 1, pages 1-102, Elsevier.
    5. Cobb-Clark, Deborah A. & Schurer, Stefanie, 2012. "The stability of big-five personality traits," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 115(1), pages 11-15.
    6. Gravelle, Hugh & Hole, Arne Risa & Santos, Rita, 2011. "Measuring and testing for gender discrimination in physician pay: English family doctors," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 660-674, July.
    7. Kathryn M. Langwell, 1982. "Factors Affecting the Incomes of Men and Women Physicians: Further Explorations," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 17(2), pages 261-275.
    8. Alan S. Blinder, 1973. "Wage Discrimination: Reduced Form and Structural Estimates," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 8(4), pages 436-455.
    9. Marianne Bertrand & Claudia Goldin & Lawrence F. Katz, 2010. "Dynamics of the Gender Gap for Young Professionals in the Financial and Corporate Sectors," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(3), pages 228-255, July.
    10. Marianne Bertrand & Kevin F. Hallock, 2001. "The Gender Gap in Top Corporate Jobs," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 55(1), pages 3-21, October.
    11. Engelbert Theurl & Hannes Winner, 2011. "The male–female gap in physician earnings: evidence from a public health insurance system," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(10), pages 1184-1200, October.
    12. Heineck, Guido & Anger, Silke, 2010. "The returns to cognitive abilities and personality traits in Germany," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 535-546, June.
    13. James Albrecht & Anders Bjorklund & Susan Vroman, 2003. "Is There a Glass Ceiling in Sweden?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 21(1), pages 145-177, January.
    14. Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, 2008. "Gender Preference and Equilibrium in the Imperfectly Competitive Market for Physician Services," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 34(3), pages 325-346.
    15. Ohsfeldt, Robert L. & Culler, Steven D., 1986. "Differences in income between male and female physicians," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 335-346, December.
    16. Lundberg, Shelly & Rose, Elaina, 2000. "Parenthood and the earnings of married men and women," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(6), pages 689-710, November.
    17. Sanders Korenman & David Neumark, 1991. "Does Marriage Really Make Men More Productive?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 26(2), pages 282-307.
    18. Jane Waldfogel, 1998. "Understanding the "Family Gap" in Pay for Women with Children," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(1), pages 137-156, Winter.
    19. Leslie I. Boden & Monica Galizzi, 2003. "Income Losses of Women and Men Injured at Work," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 38(3).
    20. David J. Bashaw & John S. Heywood, 2001. "The Gender Earnings Gap for US Physicians: Has Equality been Achieved?," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 15(3), pages 371-391, September.
    21. Maury Gittleman & Edward N. Wolff, 2004. "Racial Differences in Patterns of Wealth Accumulation," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 39(1).
    22. Terence Chai Cheng & Anthony Scott & Sung-Hee Jeon & Guyonne Kalb & John Humphreys & Catherine Joyce, 2010. "What Factors Influence the Earnings of GPs and Medical Specialists in Australia? Evidence from the MABEL Survey," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2010n12, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.
    23. Wenda Yan & Terence Chai Cheng & Anthony Scott & Catherine M. Joyce & John Humphreys & Guyonne Kalb & Anne Leahy, 2011. "Medicine in Australia: Balancing Employment and Life (MABEL)," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 44(1), pages 102-112, March.
    24. Jacobsen, Joyce P & Rayack, Wendy L, 1996. "Do Men Whose Wives Work Really Earn Less?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(2), pages 268-273, May.
    25. Amalia Miller, 2011. "The effects of motherhood timing on career path," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 24(3), pages 1071-1100, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Terence C. Cheng & Pravin K. Trivedi, 2015. "Attrition Bias in Panel Data: A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing? A Case Study Based on the Mabel Survey," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(9), pages 1101-1117, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stefanie Schurer & Daniel Kuehnle & Anthony Scott & Terence C. Cheng, 2016. "A Man's Blessing or a Woman's Curse? The Family Earnings Gap of Doctors," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(3), pages 385-414, July.
    2. Astrid Kunze, 2020. "The effect of children on male earnings and inequality," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 18(3), pages 683-710, September.
    3. Kunze, Astrid, 2014. "The family gap in career progression," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 29/2014, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.
    4. Gravelle, Hugh & Hole, Arne Risa & Santos, Rita, 2011. "Measuring and testing for gender discrimination in physician pay: English family doctors," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 660-674, July.
    5. Kunze, Astrid, 2014. "Are All of the Good Men Fathers? The Effect of Having Children on Earnings," IZA Discussion Papers 8113, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Jones, Melanie K. & Kaya, Ezgi, 2021. "The Gender Pay Gap in UK Medicine," IZA Discussion Papers 14177, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Sara Cools & Marte Strøm, 2016. "Parenthood wage penalties in a double income society," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 391-416, June.
    8. Terence Chai Cheng & Anthony Scott & Sung‐Hee Jeon & Guyonne Kalb & John Humphreys & Catherine Joyce, 2012. "What Factors Influence The Earnings Of General Practitioners And Medical Specialists? Evidence From The Medicine In Australia: Balancing Employment And Life Survey," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(11), pages 1300-1317, November.
    9. Sara Cools & Simen Markussen & Marte Strøm, 2017. "Children and Careers: How Family Size Affects Parents’ Labor Market Outcomes in the Long Run," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 54(5), pages 1773-1793, October.
    10. Kunze, Astrid, 2016. "The effect of children on earnings inequality among men," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145823, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    11. Cadsby, C. Bram & Servátka, Maroš & Song, Fei, 2013. "How competitive are female professionals? A tale of identity conflict," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 284-303.
    12. Bonaccolto-Töpfer, Marina & Briel, Stephanie, 2022. "The gender pay gap revisited: Does machine learning offer new insights?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    13. Ksenia V. Rozhkova & Natalya Yemelina & Sergey Yu. Roshchin, 2021. "Can Non-Cognitive Skills Explain The Gender Wage Gap In Russia? An Unconditional Quantile Regression Approach," HSE Working papers WP BRP 252/EC/2021, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    14. Brenzel, Hanna & Laible, Marie-Christine, 2016. "Does personality matter? : the impact of the big five on the migrant and gender wage gaps," IAB-Discussion Paper 201626, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
    15. Collischon & Matthias, 2018. "Can Personality Traits Explain Glass Ceilings?," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 965, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    16. Sloczynski, Tymon, 2013. "Population Average Gender Effects," IZA Discussion Papers 7315, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. Sonja C. Kassenboehmer & Mathias G. Sinning, 2014. "Distributional Changes in the Gender Wage Gap," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 67(2), pages 335-361, April.
    18. Strittmatter, Anthony & Wunsch, Conny, 2021. "The Gender Pay Gap Revisited with Big Data: Do Methodological Choices Matter?," Working papers 2021/05, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    19. Bütikofer, Aline & Jensen, Sissel & Salvanes, Kjell G., 2018. "The role of parenthood on the gender gap among top earners," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 103-123.
    20. Robert M. Sauer & Christopher Taber, 2021. "Understanding women's wage growth using indirect inference with importance sampling," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(4), pages 453-473, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    family physicians; decomposition methods; labour force attachment; family-earnings gap; gender-earnings gap; MABEL;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7017. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.