IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2205.12892.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

American postdoctoral salaries do not account for growing disparities in cost of living

Author

Listed:
  • Tim Sainburg

Abstract

The National Institute of Health (NIH) sets postdoctoral (postdoc) trainee stipend levels that many American institutions and investigators use as a basis for postdoc salaries. Although salary standards are held constant across universities, the cost of living in those universities' cities and towns vary widely. Across non-postdoc jobs, more expensive cities pay workers higher wages that scale with an increased cost of living. This work investigates the extent to which postdoc wages account for cost-of-living differences. More than 27,000 postdoc salaries across all US universities are analyzed alongside measures of regional differences in cost of living. We find that postdoc salaries do not account for cost-of-living differences, in contrast with the broader labor market in the same cities and towns. Despite a modest increase in income in high cost of living areas, real (cost of living adjusted) postdoc salaries differ by 29% ($15k 2021 USD) between the least and most expensive areas. Cities that produce greater numbers of tenure-track faculty relative to students such as Boston, New York, and San Francisco are among the most impacted by this pay disparity. The postdoc pay gap is growing and is well-positioned to incur a greater financial burden on economically disadvantaged groups and contribute to faculty hiring disparities in women and racial minorities.

Suggested Citation

  • Tim Sainburg, 2022. "American postdoctoral salaries do not account for growing disparities in cost of living," Papers 2205.12892, arXiv.org.
  • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2205.12892
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2205.12892
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Winters, John V., 2009. "Wages and prices: Are workers fully compensated for cost of living differences?," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(5), pages 632-643, September.
    2. Gene Russo, 2008. "US National Postdoctoral Association campaigns for stipend boost," Nature, Nature, vol. 453(7191), pages 129-129, May.
    3. Christopher L Pickett, 2019. "The increasing importance of fellowships and career development awards in the careers of early-stage biomedical academic researchers," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(10), pages 1-17, October.
    4. Glaeser, Edward L., 2008. "Cities, Agglomeration, and Spatial Equilibrium," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199290444.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sainburg, Tim, 2023. "American postdoctoral salaries do not account for growing disparities in cost of living," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(3).
    2. Imre Lengyel, 2011. "Types of competitiveness of Hungarian regions: agglomeration economies and endogenous regional development," ERSA conference papers ersa11p674, European Regional Science Association.
    3. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose & Michael Storper, 2020. "Housing, urban growth and inequalities: The limits to deregulation and upzoning in reducing economic and spatial inequality," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(2), pages 223-248, February.
    4. Mark Thissen & Frank Van Oort, 2010. "European Place‐Based Development Policy And Sustainable Economic Agglomeration," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 101(4), pages 473-480, September.
    5. Joan Monras, 2020. "Immigration and Wage Dynamics: Evidence from the Mexican Peso Crisis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(8), pages 3017-3089.
    6. Carlino, Gerald & Kerr, William R., 2015. "Agglomeration and Innovation," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 349-404, Elsevier.
    7. Joan Monras, 2019. "Minimum Wages and Spatial Equilibrium: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 37(3), pages 853-904.
    8. Oliver W. Lerbs, 2014. "House prices, housing development costs, and the supply of new single-family housing in German counties and cities," Journal of Property Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(3), pages 183-210, September.
    9. John Gathergood & Fabian Gunzinger & Benedict Guttman-Kenney & Edika Quispe-Torreblanca & Neil Stewart, 2020. "Levelling Down and the COVID-19 Lockdowns: Uneven Regional Recovery in UK Consumer Spending," Papers 2012.09336, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2020.
    10. Mark D. Partridge & Dan S. Rickman & M. Rose Olfert & Ying Tan, 2015. "When Spatial Equilibrium Fails: Is Place-Based Policy Second Best?," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(8), pages 1303-1325, August.
    11. Jason Furman, 2020. "Comment on "Macroeconomic Consequences of Infrastructure Investment"," NBER Chapters, in: Economic Analysis and Infrastructure Investment, pages 268-276, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Badi H. Baltagi & Georges Bresson & Jean‐Michel Etienne, 2015. "Hedonic Housing Prices in Paris: An Unbalanced Spatial Lag Pseudo‐Panel Model with Nested Random Effects," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(3), pages 509-528, April.
    13. Oliver Lerbs, "undated". "House Prices, Housing Development Costs, and the Supply of New Single-Family Housing in German Counties and Cities," Working Papers 201283, Institute of Spatial and Housing Economics, Munster Universitary.
    14. Dinkelman, Taryn & Schulhofer-Wohl, Sam, 2015. "Migration, congestion externalities, and the evaluation of spatial investments," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 189-202.
    15. Banzhaf, H. Spencer & Farooque, Omar, 2013. "Interjurisdictional housing prices and spatial amenities: Which measures of housing prices reflect local public goods?," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(4), pages 635-648.
    16. Mark Thissen & Narisra Limtanakool & Hans Hilbers, 2011. "Road pricing and agglomeration economies: a new methodology to estimate indirect effects applied to the Netherlands," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 47(3), pages 543-567, December.
    17. Lei, Weiqian & Jiao, Limin & Xu, Zhibang & Zhu, Xinhua, 2024. "Evolution of urban land and population system coupling micro–dynamics and macro-stability: Trends and paths," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    18. Monras, Joan, 2015. "Economic Shocks and Internal Migration," IZA Discussion Papers 8840, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. Zahirovich-Herbert, Velma & Gibler, Karen M., 2014. "The effect of new residential construction on housing prices," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 1-18.
    20. Ilenia Epifani & Rosella Nicolini, 2013. "On The Population Density Distribution Across Space: A Probabilistic Approach," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(3), pages 481-510, August.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2205.12892. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.