International Comparison of Physician Incomes

Aidan Buehler (), Joshua D. Gottlieb (), Jeffrey Hicks (), Lisa Laun, MÃ¥rten Palme (), Maria Polyakova (), Victoria Udalova () and Maria Ventura ()
Additional contact information
Aidan Buehler: University of Chicago
Joshua D. Gottlieb: University of Chicago - Harris School of Public Policy
Jeffrey Hicks: University of Toronto
MÃ¥rten Palme: Stockholm University
Maria Polyakova: Stanford University
Victoria Udalova: U.S. Census Bureau
Maria Ventura: University of Edinburgh - School of Economics

No 2026-44, Working Papers from Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics

Abstract: We compare physician incomes using tax data from the United States, Canada, Sweden, and the Netherlands. Physicians are concentrated in the top percentiles of the income distribution in all four countries, especially in the United States and certain specialties. Physician incomes are highest in the United States, and a decomposition shows that this mainly reflects differences in overall income distributions, rather than physicians’ locations in those distributions. This suggests that broader labor market differences, and thus physicians’ outside options, drive absolute incomes. Shifting US physicians’ incomes to match relative positions in other countries’ distributions would only marginally reduce healthcare spending.

JEL-codes: I13 I18 J24 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2026
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https://repec.bfi.uchicago.edu/RePEc/pdfs/BFI_WP_2026-44.pdf (application/pdf)

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Journal Article: International Comparison of Physician Incomes (2026)
Working Paper: International Comparison of Physician Incomes (2026)
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