Pharmacists' earnings: their level and distribution.

Area of Science:

• Health Economics
• Labor Economics
• Pharmacy Practice

Background:

• Central tendency and spread of earnings distributions are theoretically related, though methodologically independent.
• Understanding this relationship is key to analyzing wage structures.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how changes in the mean of pharmacists' earnings affect earnings inequality.
• To determine if increased central tendency in earnings leads to wider or narrower dispersion.

Main Methods:

• Utilized survey data from pharmacists in South Florida.
• Employed ordinary least squares regression to model five inequality indicators against the mean earnings.
• Analyzed data for all pharmacists and separately for full-time pharmacists.

Main Results:

• A significant relationship exists between earnings central tendency and dispersion.
• Including part-time pharmacists reversed the observed effect of earnings levels on inequality.
• Higher earnings reduced inequality for all pharmacists but increased it for full-time pharmacists.

Conclusions:

• The earnings generation process differs between full-time and part-time pharmacists.
• The opportunity cost of leisure influences pharmacists' work hours, earnings patterns, and other labor outcomes.