Health and Medical Administration Commons^™

Underpaid Or Overpaid? Wage Analyses For Nurses Using Jobs Versus Worker Attributes, Barry T. Hirsch, Edward J. Schumacher

Health Care Administration Faculty Research

Nursing shortages are common despite the fact that nurses earn far higher wages than other college-educated women. Our analysis addresses the puzzle of "high" nursing wages. Employee data from the Current Population Survey are matched with detailed job descriptors from the Occupational Information Network. Nursing requires high levels of compensable skills and demanding working conditions. Standard log wage regression estimates indicate nursing wage advantages of about 40%. Accounting for job attributes reduces estimates to roughly 20%. Rather than transforming ordinary least squares log gaps to percentages, alternative methods measuring Mincerian gaps produce estimates of 15% or less. We conclude that …