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

Stefanie Schurer, Daniel Kuehnle (), Anthony Scott () and Terence Cheng ()

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

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.

Keywords: Gender-earnings gap; family-earnings gap; labour force attachment; decomposition methods; family physicians; MABEL (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2012-11
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/downloads ... series/wp2012n24.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: One Man's Blessing, Another Woman's Curse? Family Factors and the Gender-Earnings Gap of Doctors (2012)
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:wp2012n24

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 ().