6 ms·

Women overinvesting in education? Evidence from the medical profession (2012)

48 points by barry-cotter 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
metaphor 4y ago
https://sci-hub.se/10.1086/665536 https://sci-hub.se/10.1086/665536
SSJPython 4y ago
> While there is a wage gap, our result occurs primarily because most female physicians do not work enough hours to rationalize medical school whereas most men do. The important part is here. The wage gap isn't because of discrimination or sexism like certain parties or factions claim. The wage gap is mostly a working gap. But that doesn't grab the headlines. Mass media would rather misinform and outright lie to the public. That's sadly the result of turning news into a profit-making private enterprise rather than a public good.
- ec109685 4y ago
  You’re generalizing a lot based on a particular study that does say there is a wage gap.
  - horsawlarway 4y ago
    And yet the takeaway from his point is entirely valid. The returns from the money spent on education are not present if the time spent in the field is low (through either low hours or leaving the field). Ex - Nearly 40% of female physicians are either part time or no longer in the field at all after just 6 years. And that's literally data coming from the AAMC (https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/why-women-leave-medicine https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/why-women-leave-medicine). 22.6% of female physicians are part time after 6 years, compared to just 3.6% of male physicians. That's your gender gap... Further - the obvious cause is staring everyone in the face... children. Women are still disproportionately considered the primary caregivers for children. If you want to remove the gender gap... make it more compelling for men to stay at home and take care of their kids. Personally - I think this will be a fairly challenging task, because I happen to see childcare as a very rewarding occupation (at least when they're your own children, especially below the age of ~12), which makes it obvious why women presented with the opportunity to stay at home take it. But that reward is not financial.
    - 8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago
      I can't think of how we ensure that men and women have the same exact outcomes without taking away their freedom of choice or enforcing equal pay regardless of time worked. Are there any societies out there that could not accept the inequality in earnings and successfully figured out a solution that felt both liberal and fair? It feels like you just can't get an egalitarian utopia without the government setting hard limits on how much or how little each person can work. Seems like getting 100% parity would be mostly unsolvable, given human nature, unless we were to replace those workers with computers.
      - horsawlarway 4y ago
        Personally - As a father, I think you could get a hell of a lot closer with the following 1. Free childcare (we've already gone a long way here with the public school system, which at the end of the day mainly boils down to childcare in many parts of the US) 2. Family stipends during FMLA leave for childbirth. Number 2 in particular is required because social norms are still absolutely geared towards expecting new fathers to take considerably less time off to ensure a paycheck is coming in. This sets a rhythm that is hard to adjust later - the father does not spend as much bonding time with young children. Housework falls to the mother because she is no longer working. Once the mother is recovered the patterns are already established, and the conversation about cost of childcare vs the mother's salary begins on a biased foot. I'd actually much prefer being a full time stay at home dad, but holy fucking hell is the stigma running strong there across our society at large.
    - zx8080 4y ago
      From the other point of view, what would it mean if women will spend much less time with children. For example, if they will be some better compensated. Will children be spending time in nursery? From the financial point of view that seems to be wise for women. But what changes does it bring to the socium? For children, spending time mostly in a nursery while both parents work hard vs with mother (or both parents) is very different.
      - scarmig 4y ago
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Also, it's primary care physicians, not specialists. Specialists earn considerably more.
- 4mitkumar 4y ago
  And, what could be the potential factors which lead to " lower working hours" for women compared to their male counterparts?
  - gotoeleven 4y ago
    We need a government program to prevent women from choosing to work less than men.
    - yucky 4y ago
      This reads so dystopian that I'm hoping it was said in jest. It's scary that I have to ask though, too many people actually think like this.
  - scarmig 4y ago
    Women and men both enforce gender roles. The expectation to work longer hours at less fulfilling, more rigid jobs falls on men; the expectation to perform more hours of childcare falls on women.
  - 4mitkumar 4y ago
    The existence and origin of societal expectations can be it's own thread. But as long as it's clear that one party does have other responsibilities to cater to, which in turn leads to lower amount of time available to invest in their chosen professions.
- fullsend 4y ago
  Rather 90% or 95% of the effect is probably not due to discrimination. Not 100% of the phenomenon is explained by working less. Be honest.
  - esyir 4y ago
    It is. If the effect is largely not because of discrimination, and discrimination is far more often stated as the cause, I know who I'd be calling dishonest here. This goes double for anything directed at the public, since a short soundbite is all you get.
  - tw98521358 4y ago
    Yeah but the order 5% is likely outlier men (boomers) that earn disproportionately larger salaries and are slowly dropping out of the data set. The next group replacing them will have better gender distribution, it just takes time for the effect to flow through
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago
  The 77 cents on the dollar has become a What You Can't Say (http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html) fact that will get you in trouble if questioned in polite left-leaning company. Another one of those factional shibboleths that reveals whether you've accepted the shared set of beliefs.
  - godelski 4y ago
    There are 2 different wage gaps that people that don't learn about get confused about. It is important to note that they answer two different questions. The first is the 80 cents one which is an aggregated measurement and better informs us about the monetary medians for career differences in men and women. But people often think this is when holding everything equal. When variables are held equal the aggregated result shrinks a lot and comes to roughly 96 cents on the dollar. But this does not account for issues like a glass ceiling or other things which are quite difficult to accurately measure. It is also important to note that while women on average make less (holding factors equivalent) that there are sectors where women make more (e.g. professorships). A great example of this is the Uber paper and has been extensively discussed on popular podcasts like Freakanomics and The Pay Gap (which goes into a lot of the nuances I'm not mentioning).
    - anthony_d 4y ago
      I’d be surprised if many people mention a wage gap without knowing the different measurements. Like most things it’s the underlying assumptions combined with the view on ethics that people tend to disagree on. For example, your assertion that the 80% gap “better informs” makes no sense without some context you didn’t share. As a random fact it’s no better or worse than any other, but it doesn’t explain anything. The 96% points to what likely represents a real (but small) ethical issue that needs corrected, it’s also a more precise and accurate statement that I’d say better informs. Neither number says anything about a glass ceiling, and using them to argue about a glass ceiling just undermines credibility.
- LastTrain 4y ago
  No, there is a wage gap, which is discriminatory - it says that right in your quote - but the major impact on the studies analysis , which has to do with comparing lifetime earnings versus cost of education, had more to do with women opting out of the workforce.
  - 8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago
    Disparate outcomes do not imply disparate treatment.
    - LastTrain 4y ago
      Denying there is disparate treatment in women’s salaries relative to men’s is a bit like denying the moon landing or saying 9/11 was an inside job. No matter how you slice it - correct for time on job, school pedigree, etc, etc women are systematically paid less than men across all professions.
  - hackerlight 4y ago
    > there is a wage gap, which is discriminatory Even if a wage gap exists, it doesn't automatically follow that it's discriminatory. Example: Women work less hours/take longer time off --> less job skills on average --> less promotions on average --> wage gap.
    - LastTrain 4y ago
      If you correct for all of that - only compare women who work the same hours, have the same degree from the same school, same number of years on the job - it always comes out that women are paid less. Because you aren’t aware of this doesn’t make it not true.
      - hackerlight 4y ago
        Source?
  - simonh 4y ago
- gotoeleven 4y ago
  [flagged]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- etchalon 4y ago
  This is part of the problem with this topic: neither side talks honestly about the effect, and both sides collapse the nuances down to easily defeated straw men. The "wage gap" has never been attributed, by any study, soley to the impacts of discrimination for equal work – though some effect is seen. For instance, the 2009 Bertrand showed that there was a 10% gap between new business school graduates, based on gender [0]. That difference never really disappears, on average, across the population [3]. However, the effect definitively widens at child birth, with women shouldering an unequal amount of caregiving responsibilities [1]. Whether married or unmarried, women with children take a hit. However, when married, even with children, men don't take a hit. Married men generally earn more than unmarried men. In fact, they generally earn more than everyone else – though this effect is shrinking. [2] Unmarried women, without children, will generally earn 90% of an unmarried, child-less male assuming equal education levels. We see a growing disparity, with unmarried, childless women overtaking unmarried, childless men in earnings due to the education gap. Eliminate educational differences, and the gap reappears. When either side collapses the "wage gap" down to simplistic tropes like individualized gender-specific discrimination or "choices", they're generally signaling they haven't studied the topic beyond reading a few headlines. It's way more complicated, and interesting. [0]: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/goldin/files/dynamics_of_the_gender_gap_for_young_professionals_in_the_financial_and_corporate_sectors.pdfhttps://scholar.harvard.edu/files/goldin/files/dynamics_of_the_gender_gap_for_young_professionals_in_the_financial_and_corporate_sectors.pdf https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/goldin/files/dynamics_of_t... [1]: https://www.henrikkleven.com/uploads/3/7/3/1/37310663/kleven-landais-sogaard_nber-w24219_jan2018.pdf https://www.henrikkleven.com/uploads/3/7/3/1/37310663/kleven... [2]: https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/economic-synopses/2018/09/14/married-men-sit-atop-the-wage-ladder https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/economic-synops... [3]: https://docs.iza.org/dp9656.pdf https://docs.iza.org/dp9656.pdf
  - scarmig 4y ago
    > However, the effect definitively widens at child birth, with women shouldering an unequal amount of caregiving responsibilities [1]. Whether married or unmarried, women with children take a hit. This is a a loaded phrasing, though. You could just as well say that men shoulder an unequal amount of wage earning responsibilities. Men with children take a hit in the amount of time and energy they are expected to spend making money. Gender roles and social expectations are what's driving this, but the common framing is all too often men using their agency to force women into theirs, without allowing for the possibility that women are using their agency to do the same.
- zuminator 4y ago
  The paper doesn't say that the wage gap is mostly a working gap. It says the earnings gap is mostly a working gap. In other words, both things are true: * Women get paid $9/hr. less than men with the same level of experience (wage gap) * Women work 11 fewer hours per week than men (working gap) .. and the paper claims it's the second factor that is the primary cause of the earnings gap. There's nothing there that either confirms nor refutes discrimination/sexism. Interestingly the paper states: In our data, both the median male and median female doctor work at least 40 hours per week in every experience bin. Despite both being “full-time,” men and women nonetheless work substantially different numbers of hours in our data. The commonly used methodology of estimating earnings equations with no controls for hours worked (apart from restricting the sample to FTFY workers) would conclude that men’s wages are much higher relative to women’s wages than they actually are. In other words, the authors are saying that a naive analysis would support the (in their estimation) incorrect conclusion that the earnings gap is purely a wage gap. If that's true, and their paper takes a new step forward in disambiguating these factors, then it would be unfair to paint the previously held received wisdom as deliberate misinformation and lies.
- xyzzyz 4y ago
  > That's sadly the result of turning news into a profit-making private enterprise rather than a public good. Let’s take a look what NPR thinks about gender pay gap: https://www.npr.org/2022/03/16/1086732450/on-equal-pay-day-women-are-trying-to-make-a-dollar-out-of-83-cents https://www.npr.org/2022/03/16/1086732450/on-equal-pay-day-w... Are they clear that the gap is mostly about number of hours actually worked in a year, and difference in gender distribution across occupation? No, these are only alluded to in passing, if mentioned at all. In fact, this nonprofit venue’s messaging on the topic is the exactly the same as the one you can find in for-profit venues. Profit motive as explanatory factor for why media misinforms people is greatly overstated.
  - crackercrews 4y ago
    Audience capture strikes again.
klipt 4y ago
But if someone studying to be a doctor likely marries a doctor, while someone studying to be a physician assistant likely marries another physician assistant, the doctor may benefit from higher household income even if some of it is technically earned by their spouse.
- QuarterReptile 4y ago
  A woman in PA school probably has an easier time finding a doctor than a fellow student to marry. When my wife attended 6 years ago, there were 5 or 6 men in the class of 80. I suspect more of those women are married to doctors than classmates; I can't report comprehensively, but I know of two married to doctors and none married to classmates. An MD is just a really shortsighted decision for many women who would like to have and spend time with multiple kids. If you're hitting all wickets in ideal timing (assuming HS grad at 18), you could finish med school at 26, then residency sometime around 30, which is already feeling quite late to have your first child. And the residencies I hear about don't sound like great environments for a healthy pregnancy, so maybe make conception at 30, baby probably at 31. And now you have loans to pay off and high earning potential, just as you're wanting to spend time with young children. As this is only baby #1. And hopefully these women already have husbands lined up, despite that being a significant difficulty for woman doctors. It gets much worse when you talk to women who, for various reasons, are still applying and hoping to get in at age 25 or 26. And then I've heard 20-something men talk about applying for medical school in the same conversation where they ask coworkers about part time work schedules and allude to wanting not to work very much; it's like their perceptions of life have a single scalar parameter of success, years of medical education, and they can't see all the stuff off the sides of that grind of a narrow track.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
throwaway09223 4y ago
This is probably true for everyone outside of certain low risk high return fields (like CS). Regarding the gender angle, I'm reminded that the income gap is really between husbands and wives. Unmarried, childless women earn significantly more than unmarried, childless men on average. The primary issue revolves around which parent leaves a career to stay home with children. Career gaps are extremely costly. If you factor in opportunity cost and lost wages for school years along with compound interest then most degrees will never generate a positive ROI. On average, degrees barely break even with their cost, but some degrees are far more lucrative than others -- meaning other degrees are far below breakeven ROI. Taking a mid-career break makes it massively harder to overcome the costs related to obtaining a degree. This would be true for either men or women.
- metaphor 4y ago
  > Unmarried, childless women earn significantly more than unmarried, childless men on average. Got a cite for this assertion?
  - scarmig 4y ago
    https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/09/01/129581758/ https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/09/01/129581758/ But there's one demographic where women outearn men: people who are single, childless, and between the ages of 22 and 30. Within that universe, U.S. women earn 8 percent more than men, on average, according to a new report from the research firm Reach Advisors. Women in this group out-earn men by an even larger margin in some metro areas -- 17 percent in New York, 11 percent in San Francisco, and a high of 21 percent in Atlanta, to name a few.
    - metaphor 4y ago
      Thanks for the cite...unfortunate the referenced report by Reach Advisors wasn't linked, but the logic makes sense.
      - scarmig 4y ago
lkrubner 4y ago
Given that this is a ratio, with both a denominator and a numerator, we should step carefully when declaring which part of the ratio seems abnormal. Either side of the ratio could be wrong, but for different causes. If, for instance, women were facing persistent discrimination, then their income would seem low relative to their education, but the causal effect would be the opposite of what is suggested by the words: "Women Are Overinvesting in Education for the Monetary Returns." If the other side of the ratio is suppressed, then it would be more accurate to write: "Women are underpaid in monetary returns for their education."
- scarmig 4y ago
  The reframing leaves it as a passive thing that just happens. A bit more revealing of the assumptions involved would be "Organizations undercompensate women in monetary terms for their education." Which suggests the question, do women get paid less than men once matched for education, hours worked, profession, etc.?
totorovirus 4y ago
Monetary return should include how much economical gain they get when marrying more educated men. i.e. educated women has more chance to marry an educated men who are likely to be earning more than less educated men.
- QuarterReptile 4y ago
  We should also account for the economic detriment of the fact, then, that more educated women are incrementally less likely to marry. Though it's just wishful thinking to think your or my scenarios are straightforward to price.
ThrustVectoring 4y ago
> Additionally, another possible explanator of our findings is that women earn utility from pursuing the work of doctors above the utility that they would earn from their work as PAs and that this counteracts the small financial disadvantage of entering the medical profession. There is some evidence in other fields that individuals are willing to accept a wage decrement in order to obtain a “more interesting ”position" (see, e.g., Stern 2004). It is difficult to dispute this hypothesis. The nonwage job utility hypothesis is one that is typically completely ignored when discussing wage gaps. I'm not sure what proportion of which wage gaps are explained by this - and with how politically charge the topic is, I doubt there will ever be a confident consensus range. Intuitively, most people have some extent to which they're more willing to work a more prestigious, less difficult, less time-consuming, more fulfilling, etc job even if it pays worse. It's a lot easier to measure wages, though, which makes them a particularly tempting fixation.
- codekansas 4y ago
  I think this is pretty apparent when you look at self selection into residency specialties. Everyone presumably has invested roughly same amount for college and medical school, but people choose residency programs with vastly lower earnings potential because it's what they want to do with their life. I mean, when you have to wake up and do something for 12 hours a day for 40 years, money probably won't sway your choice as much, especially when even low-paid doctors have a comfortable lifestyle.
godelski 4y ago
Academia and wages are notoriously known to to fall prey to aggregation errors (e.g. Simpsons, Berkson's, etc). In these cases it is not only useless to discuss averages, but actually harmful in that they lead us to false conclusions. Confounders are abound. I can't read the actual text to know if this is happening or not but nuance is often critical for these types of problems so take every comment here with a large grain of salt.
yuliyp 4y ago
The data in the article is fairly confusing, but it seems like their conclusion is based on it basically being a wash based on Net Present Value calculations, and getting it basically being a wash (1% difference between a PA and an MD for women with their assumptions). However, they picked an expensive private medical school (Duke) for their calculations to reach that. It also makes assumptions (i.e. that a PA would work med-school / residency-level hours during those age ranges) that feel like they're overly likely to produce the result they were hunting for. The broader point that women on the whole tend to work fewer hours and have a wage gap later in their careers still holds, as does this mean that on average the pain of a grueling professional degree is less rewarded for women. This article feels like it was hunting for a conclusion and played a few tricks to get there, more than anything.
roninhacker 4y ago
It's not overinvesting if you couldn't have married a doctor otherwise.
oliwarner 4y ago
Woof. What a take. I hope nobody makes career decisions based on this. This is the reason for maternity pay. This is the reason continuing education and flexible hours have to be mandated. Leave it to the market and all your doctors† will be manly mannish men with no experience of family care. This is so obviously undesirable, it's worth intervention. † Not limited to doctors. Expand this to any profession that favours unbroken employment and undervalues the experience of raising a family.

48 points by barry-cotter 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

metaphor 4y ago

https://sci-hub.se/10.1086/665536 https://sci-hub.se/10.1086/665536

SSJPython 4y ago

> While there is a wage gap, our result occurs primarily because most female physicians do not work enough hours to rationalize medical school whereas most men do. The important part is here. The wage gap isn't because of discrimination or sexism like certain parties or factions claim. The wage gap is mostly a working gap. But that doesn't grab the headlines. Mass media would rather misinform and outright lie to the public. That's sadly the result of turning news into a profit-making private enterprise rather than a public good.

ec109685 4y ago
You’re generalizing a lot based on a particular study that does say there is a wage gap.
- horsawlarway 4y ago
  And yet the takeaway from his point is entirely valid. The returns from the money spent on education are not present if the time spent in the field is low (through either low hours or leaving the field). Ex - Nearly 40% of female physicians are either part time or no longer in the field at all after just 6 years. And that's literally data coming from the AAMC (https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/why-women-leave-medicine https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/why-women-leave-medicine). 22.6% of female physicians are part time after 6 years, compared to just 3.6% of male physicians. That's your gender gap... Further - the obvious cause is staring everyone in the face... children. Women are still disproportionately considered the primary caregivers for children. If you want to remove the gender gap... make it more compelling for men to stay at home and take care of their kids. Personally - I think this will be a fairly challenging task, because I happen to see childcare as a very rewarding occupation (at least when they're your own children, especially below the age of ~12), which makes it obvious why women presented with the opportunity to stay at home take it. But that reward is not financial.
  - 8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago
    I can't think of how we ensure that men and women have the same exact outcomes without taking away their freedom of choice or enforcing equal pay regardless of time worked. Are there any societies out there that could not accept the inequality in earnings and successfully figured out a solution that felt both liberal and fair? It feels like you just can't get an egalitarian utopia without the government setting hard limits on how much or how little each person can work. Seems like getting 100% parity would be mostly unsolvable, given human nature, unless we were to replace those workers with computers.
    - horsawlarway 4y ago
      Personally - As a father, I think you could get a hell of a lot closer with the following 1. Free childcare (we've already gone a long way here with the public school system, which at the end of the day mainly boils down to childcare in many parts of the US) 2. Family stipends during FMLA leave for childbirth. Number 2 in particular is required because social norms are still absolutely geared towards expecting new fathers to take considerably less time off to ensure a paycheck is coming in. This sets a rhythm that is hard to adjust later - the father does not spend as much bonding time with young children. Housework falls to the mother because she is no longer working. Once the mother is recovered the patterns are already established, and the conversation about cost of childcare vs the mother's salary begins on a biased foot. I'd actually much prefer being a full time stay at home dad, but holy fucking hell is the stigma running strong there across our society at large.
  - zx8080 4y ago
    From the other point of view, what would it mean if women will spend much less time with children. For example, if they will be some better compensated. Will children be spending time in nursery? From the financial point of view that seems to be wise for women. But what changes does it bring to the socium? For children, spending time mostly in a nursery while both parents work hard vs with mother (or both parents) is very different.
    - scarmig 4y ago
pfdietz 4y ago
Also, it's primary care physicians, not specialists. Specialists earn considerably more.
4mitkumar 4y ago
And, what could be the potential factors which lead to " lower working hours" for women compared to their male counterparts?
- gotoeleven 4y ago
  We need a government program to prevent women from choosing to work less than men.
  - yucky 4y ago
    This reads so dystopian that I'm hoping it was said in jest. It's scary that I have to ask though, too many people actually think like this.
- scarmig 4y ago
  Women and men both enforce gender roles. The expectation to work longer hours at less fulfilling, more rigid jobs falls on men; the expectation to perform more hours of childcare falls on women.
- 4mitkumar 4y ago
  The existence and origin of societal expectations can be it's own thread. But as long as it's clear that one party does have other responsibilities to cater to, which in turn leads to lower amount of time available to invest in their chosen professions.
fullsend 4y ago
Rather 90% or 95% of the effect is probably not due to discrimination. Not 100% of the phenomenon is explained by working less. Be honest.
- esyir 4y ago
  It is. If the effect is largely not because of discrimination, and discrimination is far more often stated as the cause, I know who I'd be calling dishonest here. This goes double for anything directed at the public, since a short soundbite is all you get.
- tw98521358 4y ago
  Yeah but the order 5% is likely outlier men (boomers) that earn disproportionately larger salaries and are slowly dropping out of the data set. The next group replacing them will have better gender distribution, it just takes time for the effect to flow through
8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago
The 77 cents on the dollar has become a What You Can't Say (http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html) fact that will get you in trouble if questioned in polite left-leaning company. Another one of those factional shibboleths that reveals whether you've accepted the shared set of beliefs.
- godelski 4y ago
  There are 2 different wage gaps that people that don't learn about get confused about. It is important to note that they answer two different questions. The first is the 80 cents one which is an aggregated measurement and better informs us about the monetary medians for career differences in men and women. But people often think this is when holding everything equal. When variables are held equal the aggregated result shrinks a lot and comes to roughly 96 cents on the dollar. But this does not account for issues like a glass ceiling or other things which are quite difficult to accurately measure. It is also important to note that while women on average make less (holding factors equivalent) that there are sectors where women make more (e.g. professorships). A great example of this is the Uber paper and has been extensively discussed on popular podcasts like Freakanomics and The Pay Gap (which goes into a lot of the nuances I'm not mentioning).
  - anthony_d 4y ago
    I’d be surprised if many people mention a wage gap without knowing the different measurements. Like most things it’s the underlying assumptions combined with the view on ethics that people tend to disagree on. For example, your assertion that the 80% gap “better informs” makes no sense without some context you didn’t share. As a random fact it’s no better or worse than any other, but it doesn’t explain anything. The 96% points to what likely represents a real (but small) ethical issue that needs corrected, it’s also a more precise and accurate statement that I’d say better informs. Neither number says anything about a glass ceiling, and using them to argue about a glass ceiling just undermines credibility.
LastTrain 4y ago
No, there is a wage gap, which is discriminatory - it says that right in your quote - but the major impact on the studies analysis , which has to do with comparing lifetime earnings versus cost of education, had more to do with women opting out of the workforce.
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago
  Disparate outcomes do not imply disparate treatment.
  - LastTrain 4y ago
    Denying there is disparate treatment in women’s salaries relative to men’s is a bit like denying the moon landing or saying 9/11 was an inside job. No matter how you slice it - correct for time on job, school pedigree, etc, etc women are systematically paid less than men across all professions.
- hackerlight 4y ago
  > there is a wage gap, which is discriminatory Even if a wage gap exists, it doesn't automatically follow that it's discriminatory. Example: Women work less hours/take longer time off --> less job skills on average --> less promotions on average --> wage gap.
  - LastTrain 4y ago
    If you correct for all of that - only compare women who work the same hours, have the same degree from the same school, same number of years on the job - it always comes out that women are paid less. Because you aren’t aware of this doesn’t make it not true.
    - hackerlight 4y ago
      Source?
- simonh 4y ago
gotoeleven 4y ago
[flagged]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
etchalon 4y ago
This is part of the problem with this topic: neither side talks honestly about the effect, and both sides collapse the nuances down to easily defeated straw men. The "wage gap" has never been attributed, by any study, soley to the impacts of discrimination for equal work – though some effect is seen. For instance, the 2009 Bertrand showed that there was a 10% gap between new business school graduates, based on gender [0]. That difference never really disappears, on average, across the population [3]. However, the effect definitively widens at child birth, with women shouldering an unequal amount of caregiving responsibilities [1]. Whether married or unmarried, women with children take a hit. However, when married, even with children, men don't take a hit. Married men generally earn more than unmarried men. In fact, they generally earn more than everyone else – though this effect is shrinking. [2] Unmarried women, without children, will generally earn 90% of an unmarried, child-less male assuming equal education levels. We see a growing disparity, with unmarried, childless women overtaking unmarried, childless men in earnings due to the education gap. Eliminate educational differences, and the gap reappears. When either side collapses the "wage gap" down to simplistic tropes like individualized gender-specific discrimination or "choices", they're generally signaling they haven't studied the topic beyond reading a few headlines. It's way more complicated, and interesting. [0]: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/goldin/files/dynamics_of_the_gender_gap_for_young_professionals_in_the_financial_and_corporate_sectors.pdfhttps://scholar.harvard.edu/files/goldin/files/dynamics_of_the_gender_gap_for_young_professionals_in_the_financial_and_corporate_sectors.pdf https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/goldin/files/dynamics_of_t... [1]: https://www.henrikkleven.com/uploads/3/7/3/1/37310663/kleven-landais-sogaard_nber-w24219_jan2018.pdf https://www.henrikkleven.com/uploads/3/7/3/1/37310663/kleven... [2]: https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/economic-synopses/2018/09/14/married-men-sit-atop-the-wage-ladder https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/economic-synops... [3]: https://docs.iza.org/dp9656.pdf https://docs.iza.org/dp9656.pdf
- scarmig 4y ago
  > However, the effect definitively widens at child birth, with women shouldering an unequal amount of caregiving responsibilities [1]. Whether married or unmarried, women with children take a hit. This is a a loaded phrasing, though. You could just as well say that men shoulder an unequal amount of wage earning responsibilities. Men with children take a hit in the amount of time and energy they are expected to spend making money. Gender roles and social expectations are what's driving this, but the common framing is all too often men using their agency to force women into theirs, without allowing for the possibility that women are using their agency to do the same.
zuminator 4y ago
The paper doesn't say that the wage gap is mostly a working gap. It says the earnings gap is mostly a working gap. In other words, both things are true: * Women get paid $9/hr. less than men with the same level of experience (wage gap) * Women work 11 fewer hours per week than men (working gap) .. and the paper claims it's the second factor that is the primary cause of the earnings gap. There's nothing there that either confirms nor refutes discrimination/sexism. Interestingly the paper states: In our data, both the median male and median female doctor work at least 40 hours per week in every experience bin. Despite both being “full-time,” men and women nonetheless work substantially different numbers of hours in our data. The commonly used methodology of estimating earnings equations with no controls for hours worked (apart from restricting the sample to FTFY workers) would conclude that men’s wages are much higher relative to women’s wages than they actually are. In other words, the authors are saying that a naive analysis would support the (in their estimation) incorrect conclusion that the earnings gap is purely a wage gap. If that's true, and their paper takes a new step forward in disambiguating these factors, then it would be unfair to paint the previously held received wisdom as deliberate misinformation and lies.
xyzzyz 4y ago
> That's sadly the result of turning news into a profit-making private enterprise rather than a public good. Let’s take a look what NPR thinks about gender pay gap: https://www.npr.org/2022/03/16/1086732450/on-equal-pay-day-women-are-trying-to-make-a-dollar-out-of-83-cents https://www.npr.org/2022/03/16/1086732450/on-equal-pay-day-w... Are they clear that the gap is mostly about number of hours actually worked in a year, and difference in gender distribution across occupation? No, these are only alluded to in passing, if mentioned at all. In fact, this nonprofit venue’s messaging on the topic is the exactly the same as the one you can find in for-profit venues. Profit motive as explanatory factor for why media misinforms people is greatly overstated.
- crackercrews 4y ago
  Audience capture strikes again.

klipt 4y ago

But if someone studying to be a doctor likely marries a doctor, while someone studying to be a physician assistant likely marries another physician assistant, the doctor may benefit from higher household income even if some of it is technically earned by their spouse.

QuarterReptile 4y ago
A woman in PA school probably has an easier time finding a doctor than a fellow student to marry. When my wife attended 6 years ago, there were 5 or 6 men in the class of 80. I suspect more of those women are married to doctors than classmates; I can't report comprehensively, but I know of two married to doctors and none married to classmates. An MD is just a really shortsighted decision for many women who would like to have and spend time with multiple kids. If you're hitting all wickets in ideal timing (assuming HS grad at 18), you could finish med school at 26, then residency sometime around 30, which is already feeling quite late to have your first child. And the residencies I hear about don't sound like great environments for a healthy pregnancy, so maybe make conception at 30, baby probably at 31. And now you have loans to pay off and high earning potential, just as you're wanting to spend time with young children. As this is only baby #1. And hopefully these women already have husbands lined up, despite that being a significant difficulty for woman doctors. It gets much worse when you talk to women who, for various reasons, are still applying and hoping to get in at age 25 or 26. And then I've heard 20-something men talk about applying for medical school in the same conversation where they ask coworkers about part time work schedules and allude to wanting not to work very much; it's like their perceptions of life have a single scalar parameter of success, years of medical education, and they can't see all the stuff off the sides of that grind of a narrow track.

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throwaway09223 4y ago

This is probably true for everyone outside of certain low risk high return fields (like CS). Regarding the gender angle, I'm reminded that the income gap is really between husbands and wives. Unmarried, childless women earn significantly more than unmarried, childless men on average. The primary issue revolves around which parent leaves a career to stay home with children. Career gaps are extremely costly. If you factor in opportunity cost and lost wages for school years along with compound interest then most degrees will never generate a positive ROI. On average, degrees barely break even with their cost, but some degrees are far more lucrative than others -- meaning other degrees are far below breakeven ROI. Taking a mid-career break makes it massively harder to overcome the costs related to obtaining a degree. This would be true for either men or women.

metaphor 4y ago
> Unmarried, childless women earn significantly more than unmarried, childless men on average. Got a cite for this assertion?
- scarmig 4y ago
  https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/09/01/129581758/ https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/09/01/129581758/ But there's one demographic where women outearn men: people who are single, childless, and between the ages of 22 and 30. Within that universe, U.S. women earn 8 percent more than men, on average, according to a new report from the research firm Reach Advisors. Women in this group out-earn men by an even larger margin in some metro areas -- 17 percent in New York, 11 percent in San Francisco, and a high of 21 percent in Atlanta, to name a few.
  - metaphor 4y ago
    Thanks for the cite...unfortunate the referenced report by Reach Advisors wasn't linked, but the logic makes sense.
    - scarmig 4y ago

lkrubner 4y ago

Given that this is a ratio, with both a denominator and a numerator, we should step carefully when declaring which part of the ratio seems abnormal. Either side of the ratio could be wrong, but for different causes. If, for instance, women were facing persistent discrimination, then their income would seem low relative to their education, but the causal effect would be the opposite of what is suggested by the words: "Women Are Overinvesting in Education for the Monetary Returns." If the other side of the ratio is suppressed, then it would be more accurate to write: "Women are underpaid in monetary returns for their education."

scarmig 4y ago
The reframing leaves it as a passive thing that just happens. A bit more revealing of the assumptions involved would be "Organizations undercompensate women in monetary terms for their education." Which suggests the question, do women get paid less than men once matched for education, hours worked, profession, etc.?

totorovirus 4y ago

Monetary return should include how much economical gain they get when marrying more educated men. i.e. educated women has more chance to marry an educated men who are likely to be earning more than less educated men.

QuarterReptile 4y ago
We should also account for the economic detriment of the fact, then, that more educated women are incrementally less likely to marry. Though it's just wishful thinking to think your or my scenarios are straightforward to price.

ThrustVectoring 4y ago

> Additionally, another possible explanator of our findings is that women earn utility from pursuing the work of doctors above the utility that they would earn from their work as PAs and that this counteracts the small financial disadvantage of entering the medical profession. There is some evidence in other fields that individuals are willing to accept a wage decrement in order to obtain a “more interesting ”position" (see, e.g., Stern 2004). It is difficult to dispute this hypothesis. The nonwage job utility hypothesis is one that is typically completely ignored when discussing wage gaps. I'm not sure what proportion of which wage gaps are explained by this - and with how politically charge the topic is, I doubt there will ever be a confident consensus range. Intuitively, most people have some extent to which they're more willing to work a more prestigious, less difficult, less time-consuming, more fulfilling, etc job even if it pays worse. It's a lot easier to measure wages, though, which makes them a particularly tempting fixation.

codekansas 4y ago
I think this is pretty apparent when you look at self selection into residency specialties. Everyone presumably has invested roughly same amount for college and medical school, but people choose residency programs with vastly lower earnings potential because it's what they want to do with their life. I mean, when you have to wake up and do something for 12 hours a day for 40 years, money probably won't sway your choice as much, especially when even low-paid doctors have a comfortable lifestyle.

godelski 4y ago

Academia and wages are notoriously known to to fall prey to aggregation errors (e.g. Simpsons, Berkson's, etc). In these cases it is not only useless to discuss averages, but actually harmful in that they lead us to false conclusions. Confounders are abound. I can't read the actual text to know if this is happening or not but nuance is often critical for these types of problems so take every comment here with a large grain of salt.

yuliyp 4y ago

The data in the article is fairly confusing, but it seems like their conclusion is based on it basically being a wash based on Net Present Value calculations, and getting it basically being a wash (1% difference between a PA and an MD for women with their assumptions). However, they picked an expensive private medical school (Duke) for their calculations to reach that. It also makes assumptions (i.e. that a PA would work med-school / residency-level hours during those age ranges) that feel like they're overly likely to produce the result they were hunting for. The broader point that women on the whole tend to work fewer hours and have a wage gap later in their careers still holds, as does this mean that on average the pain of a grueling professional degree is less rewarded for women. This article feels like it was hunting for a conclusion and played a few tricks to get there, more than anything.

roninhacker 4y ago

It's not overinvesting if you couldn't have married a doctor otherwise.

oliwarner 4y ago

Woof. What a take. I hope nobody makes career decisions based on this. This is the reason for maternity pay. This is the reason continuing education and flexible hours have to be mandated. Leave it to the market and all your doctors† will be manly mannish men with no experience of family care. This is so obviously undesirable, it's worth intervention. † Not limited to doctors. Expand this to any profession that favours unbroken employment and undervalues the experience of raising a family.