Male and Female GPs incomes: A study of the determinants through quantiles regressions

In any fee for service system (FFS), doctors are incited to increase their activity such that outpatient care supply is strongly linked to private practice income. Thus, studying the private practice income determinants allows predicting doctors’ care provision. We aim first, to identify the effects of determinants on income, second, to study the evolution of these effects along the incomes distribution and third, to emphasize differences between male and female GPs. From an exhaustive database on French General Practitioners’ (GP) working in private practice in 2008, we perform an ordinary least squares regression and a quantile regression for each income determinant. Among others, we consider the tradeoffs within the GP’s household (couple, single, with or without children, spouse's income). The income gap between male and female GPs is 32% in favor of male and we have shown that some determinants acted with different magnitude on incomes of men and women. Another original result is related to the GP’s casemix: a male GP at the upper end of the incomes distribution may be discouraged to accept an additional elderly illustrating a potential limit of the FFS in outpatient care.