Doctor, doctor: Why the job market for married couples in medicine works well
Since World War II, women have entered the American workforce in greater numbers than ever before. For married couples, this presents a wrinkle, since it can be hard for both partners to find a desirable job in the same locale. This issue is particularly pressing in some specialized fields. When doctors graduate from medical school, for instance, they apply for their first jobs through a national clearinghouse in which both job-seekers and institutions express their preferences; a computer program determines the results. That means two-doctor couples are often fearful of not landing in the same geographic location.Now a paper co-authored by an MIT economist sheds new light on the circumstances in which these job-placement programs can, in fact, accommodate married couples quite well. “Our results provide justification for the current rules in practice,” says MIT economist Parag Pathak, who helped conduct the study to “try to understand how far we...