Why more medical students aren’t specializing in primary care

The U.S. is running low on primary care physicians, with an estimated shortage of between 17,800 and 48,000 predicted by 2034. The dearth of doctors in this area has broad ramifications, ranging from more patients seeking care from specialty and emergency medicine to increased costs to the health care system and poorer public health outcomes.

One of the challenges to growing the ranks of primary care doctors is that family physicians and others in primary care typically have a much lower income than specialized doctors, as highlighted by a recent working paper from the Becker Friedman Institute for Economics at the University of Chicago.

Looking at tax data for nearly a million doctors over 13 years, the paper’s authors found that the average doctor in the U.S. earns $350,000 annually. Pay can climb much higher than that, with doctors between the ages of 40 and 55 who are in the top 10% of earners making an average $1.3 million per year. By comparison, primary care physicians in that age range, at their peak earning potential, earn an average $201,000 per year.

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