The Long-term Impact of Work-hour Regulations on Physician Labor Supply

This chapter estimates the impact of a transitory reduction in hours during physicians' early career on their long-term labor supply, using the work-hour regulations on medical residents as the source of exogenous variation. The results show that exposure to the regulations significantly decreases practicing physicians' labor supply by about 4 hours per week on average, with female physicians being more responsive to a given reduction in early career hours. Distributional results using a changes-in-changes model confirm that the regulations primarily affect the upper end of the work-hour distribution. To reveal potential mechanisms of these effects, this study finds that the reform increases the probabilities of marriage and having a child, as well as the total number of children, for female physicians. In contrast, it does not have a significant impact on marriage and fertility outcomes for male physicians. These findings provide a better understanding of physicians' hours of work in response to the reform over time and the role of gender with respect to labor supply behavior and family formation decisions.