What Factors Influence the Earnings of GPs and Medical Specialists in Australia? Evidence from the MABEL Survey

Terence Cheng (), Anthony Scott (), Sung-Hee Jeon, Guyonne Kalb, John Humphreys and Catherine Joyce
Additional contact information
John Humphreys: School of Rural Health, Monash University
Catherine Joyce: Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, Monash University

Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series from Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne

Abstract: To date, there has been little data or empirical research on the determinants of doctors' earnings despite earnings having an important role in influencing the cost of health care, decisions on workforce participation and labour supply. This paper examines the determinants of annual earnings of general practitioners and specialists using the first wave of the Medicine in Australia: Balancing Employment and Life (MABEL), a new longitudinal survey of doctors in Australia. For both GPs and specialists, earnings are higher for men, for those who are self-employed, who do after hours or on-call work, and who work in areas with a high cost of living. GPs have higher earnings if they work in larger practices, in outer regional or rural areas, and in areas with lower GP density, whilst specialists earn more if they are a fellow of their college, have more working experience, spend more time in clinical work, have less complex patients, or work in inner regional areas. Overall, GPs earn about 32% less than specialists. The returns from on-call work, experience, and self-employment are higher for specialists compared to GPs.

Keywords: earnings; general practitioners; hedonic regression; specialists (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I11 I18 J30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2010-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/downloads ... series/wp2010n12.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iae:iaewps:wp2010n12

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series from Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010 Australia. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sheri Carnegie ().