Wage determinants among medical doctors and nurses in Spain

This paper examines the determination of wage rates for health professionals using three well known, and commonly used, econometric techniques: ordinary least squares, instrumental variables, and Heckman’s method. The data come from a graduate survey and the analysis focuses on a regional labor market, due to nationwide information on salaries is absent in Spain. After estimating different wage equations, the results suggest that OLS estimates are preferable. The findings show an important wage premium for medical doctors relative to nurses, but also a wage advantage for workers who are civil servants and a gender wage-gap that favors men. Although the expansion of higher education in Spain has reduced social inequalities in access, the main policy implication from this paper is that social class differences can still persist at the degree level—in the choice of degree—if students of higher socioeconomic status get a place at university in a degree of higher earnings, a fact that is corroborated in this study.