PM2079: Examining Pediatric Faculty Compensation by Race, Ethnicity and Gender, 2020-2021

Background: Within medicine, studies have highlighted that women and underrepresented in medicine (URiM) individuals earn significantly less than men, despite similar demographic and work-related profiles. In pediatrics, prior studies have demonstrated that pediatric subspecialties with higher proportions of women trend toward lower lifetime earning potentials than subspecialties with higher proportions of men. Women general pediatricians also earned less than men. To our knowledge, an in-depth examination of pediatric faculty compensation by gender, race, and ethnicity has not been conducted. The objectives of this study are to: (1) explore pediatric faculty salary differences by race, ethnicity, and rank; and (2) explore the intersectionality of race, ethnicity, and gender with salary.

Methods: We performed a cross-sectional study using data on pediatric faculty median compensation for the academic year of 2020-2021 from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) annual Medical School Faculty Salary Survey report. This survey reflected data from 152 medical schools and had a response rate of more than 98%. We used the AAMC Medical Minority Applicant Registry definition of URiM: self-identification as African American/Black, Hispanic, American Indian/Alaska Native, or Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander. Pearson’s chi-square tests or unadjusted linear regression were used to evaluate the association of faculty rank or median salary, respectively, with sex, race/ethnicity, and degree. We used stepwise linear regression to assess the association of median salary with faculty race/ethnicity, adjusting for degree, rank, and sex.

Results: A total of 26,548 pediatric faculty were included: 58% were women; 67.2% White, 4.5% Hispanic, and 4.4% Black; 50% assistant professor, 25% associate professor and 17% professor. The median salary was $216,289. Women were overly represented among instructors and assistant professors, while men were overly represented in associate professors, professors, chiefs, and chairs. While representation decreased compared to their overall percentage for most URiM faculty, White faculty attained associate professor, professor, chief, and chair at higher percentages than their overall prevalence. Men consistently had higher median salaries among all ranks and race/ethnicities. Hispanic women had the lowest median salary among all ranks and race/ethnicities (Figure 1). In bivariate analyses, all URiM faculty had lower median salaries when compared to White faculty, and this was similar when adjusted for degree. When also adjusting for rank and for rank and race/ethnicity, American Indian or Alaskan Native, Black, and Hispanic faculty had lower median salaries compared to White faculty while Asian and Other race/ethnicity faculty had slightly higher median salaries (Table 1).

Conclusion: Our results demonstrated broad disparities in compensation by both gender and race/ethnicity. Additionally, an intersectionality between race, ethnicity and gender existed. Academic medical centers must identify, acknowledge, and address inequities in compensation models, including conducting transparent salary audits, standardizing new hire compensation benchmarks, and automatic review of salary outliers.