Association Between Workforce Gender Distribution and Lifetime Earning Potential in the Pediatric Subspecialties.

Publication/Presentation Date

1-1-2022

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Examine the relationship between the gender distribution of the pediatric subspecialty workforce and lifetime earning potential.

METHODS: We estimated lifetime earning potential for pediatric academic subspecialists using mean debt and compensation data from national physician surveys for 2019 to 2020 and examined the relationship between the workforce gender composition and lifetime earning potential across the pediatric subspecialties using linear regression analysis.

RESULTS: Subspecialties with a higher proportion of women had lower lifetime earning potential (-$55,215 in lifetime earning potential/1% increase in the percentage of female subspecialists; P value .002, 95% CI -$24,429 to -$86,000). Similarly, a higher proportion of female first-year fellows was associated with lower lifetime earning potential (-$61,808 in lifetime earning potential/1% increase in the percentage of female first-year fellows; P value .026, 95% CI -$9,210 to -$114,405).

CONCLUSIONS: Consistent with patterns seen in other areas of adult medicine and surgery, pediatric subspecialties with higher proportions of women, such as adolescent medicine and endocrinology, tended to have lower lifetime earning potentials than subspecialties with higher proportions of men, such as cardiology and critical care. Lower earning subspecialties also tended to train higher proportions of women, suggesting that this trend may worsen over time as pediatrics in general and individual subspecialties in particular become increasingly female predominant.

Volume

22

Issue

7

First Page

1153

Last Page

1157

ISSN

1876-2867

Disciplines

Medicine and Health Sciences | Pediatrics

PubMedID

35219852

Department(s)

Department of Pediatrics

Document Type

Article

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