Latina Physicians Earn Half the Salary of Non-Hispanic White Male Doctors, New Study Finds

The research analysis, sponsored by Latina Futures 2050 Lab at UCLA, examined compensation patterns of more than 1 million physicians across the United States

An analysis of over 1 million physicians across the United States found that Latina doctors get paid approximately half the salary of non-Hispanic white male doctors.

This cross-sectional study was led by Yohualli Balderas-Medina Anaya, an M.D. and associate professor of family medicine and community health at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, and a UCLA Latina Futures 2050 Lab researcher. Anaya and a team of five additional experts drew from American Community Survey (ACS) data from 2018 to 2022 for this report.  

“Research focused on examining salaries and salary patterns among Latina physicians is scarce. In conducting this research, my colleagues and I discovered that Latina doctors, compared to non-Hispanic white men, are getting paid significantly less per hours worked, despite having the same experience and credentials,” said Anaya, whose last two years of research on this topic was supported by Latina Futures 2050 Lab, an initiative spearheaded by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC). Latina Futures was created in 2022 in collaboration with the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute (LPPI). Funded by a $15 million California state budget allocation, Latina Futures seeks to increase knowledge and insight through applied policy research on the contours of the economic, political, and social lives of all women and girls living in the United States over the next several decades.

The analysis allowed researchers to see differences in wages and income between Latina physicians and non-Hispanic white males and females as well as Latino male physicians.

Findings from this study include:

• ACS population estimates identified 1,083,177 physicians in the United States, which included 758,901 physicians who self-identified as either Hispanic or non-Hispanic white.
• Of these 1,083,177 physicians, 29,416 (2.7%) self-identified as Latina.
• Latina physicians consistently had the lowest median salary of all physician groups analyzed, regardless of employment setting, hours worked, and age. See chart below.  
• Median annual salary for non-Hispanic white male physicians was 1.9 times higher than for Latina doctors: $218,161 vs. $120,563.
• Latino male physicians outearn Latina physicians by almost $93,000 more, or 1.6 times. Non-Hispanic white female doctors outearn Latinas by almost $40,000, or 1.3 times.
• These salary differences amount to an estimated median $3.9 million less income for a Latina physician over the course of 40 years.

The authors also summarized median total income, income bracket, and median salary according to gender, ethnicity, employment setting, weekly hours worked, and age group.  

The data revealed that regardless of employment setting, hours worked, and age, Latina doctors unequivocally had the lowest median salary of their Hispanic and non-Hispanic white counterparts.

Before joining the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Anaya was an assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. For this study, Anaya worked with experts such as UCLA’s David E. Hayes Bautista, professor of public health and of medicine and director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at the UCLA School of Medicine.

“We still have many unanswered questions, such as why the wage disparity exists, and the critical need to identify effective interventions that will help achieve equal pay for equal work for Latina physicians,” the authors wrote in their analysis.

Median salary of Hispanic and non-Hispanic White (NHW) physicians by hours worked, United States, 2018-2022. Error bars indicate 95% CIs. (Panel A) Comparison of NHW male and Hispanic female physicians. (Panel B) Comparison of NHW female vs. Hispanic female physicians. (Panel C) Comparison of NHW male and NHW female physicians. (Panel D) Comparison of Hispanic male and Hispanic female physicians. Data are from the US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2018-2022 (5-year estimates), Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS), via the IPUMS dataset. © The Author(s) 2026. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the AAMC.

This study, “The Latina physician wage chasm: a secondary analysis of the American Community Survey,” was published in the journal Academic Medicine in May and was coauthored by Paul Hsu, adjunct assistant professor of epidemiology at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health; Yelba Castellon-Lopez, assistant professor at the Cancer Research Center for Health Equity at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center; Maria Mora Pinzon, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health; and Carrie L. Byington, a researcher at the University of Utah Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine and former executive vice president of University of California Health.    

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Latina Futures 2050 Lab, a research initiative spearheaded by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC), was created in 2022 in collaboration with the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute (LPPI). Funded by a $15 million California state budget allocation, over the next several decades Latina Futures seeks to increase knowledge and insight through applied policy research on the contours of the economic, political, and social lives of all women and girls living in the United States.  Follow Latina Futures on Instagram (@latinafutures) or visit www.chicano.ucla.edu/research/latina-futures-2050-lab.

The UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC), founded in 1969, is an established leader in the development of scholarly research on the Chicano-Latino population in the United States. For more information, visit www.chicano.ucla.edu. Follow CSRC on Instagram (@ucla_csrc), Facebook and LinkedIn (social media handle “UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center”).