Sasser, Alicia C. 2005. "Gender Differences in Physician Pay: Tradeoffs Between Career and Family." Journal of Human Resources 40(2): 477-504.

This paper analyzes how much of the gender earnings gap among physicians is due to women’s greater family responsibilities. Women physicians earn 11 percent less for being married plus 14 percent less for having one child and 22 percent less for having more than one child. Before marrying/having children, women physicians who later became wives or mothers had higher earnings than those who remained single and childless, but sharply reduced their hours of work after marrying/having children. The results suggest that these earnings gaps do not reflect adverse selection but rather individual choices given time constraints imposed by family responsibilities.

Alicia C. Sasser is an assistant professor of economics at Mount Holyoke College. The author thanks Francine Blau, David Cutler, Claudia Goldin, Christopher Jencks, Lawrence Katz, and Jessica Reyes for valuable suggestions and insights. Three anonymous referees provided stimulating reviews that helped shape the final form of the paper. Generous funding was provided by the National Science Foundation and the Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. All remaining errors are, of course, my own. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning October 2005 through September 2008 from Alicia C. Sasser, Mount Holyoke College, 50 College Street, South Hadley, MA 01075, asasser@mtholyoke.edu.

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