TY  - JOUR
AU  - Goldin,Claudia
AU  - Katz,Lawrence F.
TI  - The Most Egalitarian of All Professions: Pharmacy and the Evolution of a Family-Friendly Occupation
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 18410
PY  - 2012
Y2  - September 2012
DO  - 10.3386/w18410
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18410
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18410.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Claudia Goldin
National Bureau of Economic Research
1050 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/613-1200
Fax: 617/613-1245
E-Mail: cgoldin@harvard.edu

Lawrence F. Katz
Department of Economics
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA  02138
Tel: 617/495-5148
Fax: 617/613-1245
E-Mail: lkatz@harvard.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2013-02-01
AB  - Pharmacy has become a female-majority profession that is highly remunerated with a small gender earnings gap and low earnings dispersion relative to other occupations.  We sketch a labor market framework based on the theory of equalizing differences to integrate and interpret our empirical findings on earnings, hours of work, and the part-time work wage penalty for pharmacists.  Using extensive surveys of pharmacists for 2000, 2004, and 2009 as well as samples from the American Community Surveys and the Current Population Surveys, we explore the gender earnings gap, the penalty to part-time work, labor force persistence, and the demographics of pharmacists relative to other college graduates.  We address why the substantial entrance of women into the profession was associated with an increase in their earnings relative to male pharmacists.  We conclude that the changing nature of pharmacy employment with the growth of large national pharmacy chains and hospitals and the related decline of independent pharmacies played key roles in the creation of a more family-friendly, female-friendly pharmacy profession.  The position of pharmacist is probably the most egalitarian of all U.S. professions today.
ER  -