“Are Women Overinvesting in Education? Evidence from the Medical Profession”, 2012-06 ():
Recent literature finds that women earn substantially lower returns to professional degrees. Does this render these degrees poor investments for women?
We compare physicians to physician assistants, a similar profession with lower wages and training costs, mitigating some selection issues.
The median female (but not male) primary-care physician would have been financially better off becoming a physician assistant. 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.
We discuss robustness issues and non-wage returns to education that may rationalize these investments by women.