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STEM doctorate recipients with disabilities experienced early in life earn lower salaries and are underrepresented among higher academic positions

Nature Human Behaviour volume 8, pages 72–81 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

There is paucity of data examining disparities in salary and representation for disabled scientists, which is needed to advance inclusion and equity for people with disabilities in STEM. Using data from the 2019 Survey of Doctorate Recipients (United States, N = 1,148,817), we show that doctorate recipients working in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) with disabilities experienced early in life (at age <25 yr) earned US$10,580 less per year (95% CI: −$13,661, −$7,499) than non-disabled workers. In the subset of academic workers, doctorate recipients with early disabilities earned $14,360 less (95% CI: −$17,546, −$11,175) than those without disabilities. We observed an underrepresentation of academics with disabilities in higher faculty ranks (χ2: 647.2; P < 0.0001), among Deans/Presidents (χ2: 27.4; P = 0.0004) and among those with tenure (χ2: 525; P < 0.0001). These findings support a need to expand inclusion efforts, provide equal opportunities for career advancement and improve working conditions for people with disabilities in STEM.

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Fig. 1: Representation of doctorate recipients with disabilities working in STEM across categories of academic career milestones.

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Data availability

SDR 2019 data are publicly available on the NSF’s website (https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/datadownload/), and Institutional Review Board approval was not required since data were de-identified. All analyses were conducted using R Studio v.2021.09.1. Documentation on the ‘weightit’ (v.0.14.2) and ‘cobalt’ (v.4.5.1) R packages used for propensity score computation and assessment of covariate balance can be found at https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/cobalt/index.html and https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/WeightIt/index.html. The code used for our analyses can be found in Supplementary Information (Methods 1).

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Acknowledgements

We thank the National Science Foundation for their support with inquiries regarding SDR 2019 data. This research received no specific grant from any agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Johns Hopkins Disability Health Research Center, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Franz Castro, Varshini Varadaraj & Bonnielin K. Swenor

  2. Departments of Mental Health, Biostatistics, Health Policy and Management, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Elizabeth Stuart

  3. Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Jennifer Deal

  4. Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Jennifer Deal & Bonnielin K. Swenor

  5. Department of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Jennifer Deal

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Contributions

F.C., E.S. and B.K.S. conceptualized the project. F.C., E.S., V.V. and B.K.S. developed the methodology. F.C. developed software. F.C., E.S., J.D., V.V. and B.K.S. conducted formal analysis. F.C. curated data. F.C. wrote the original draft of the paper. E.S., J.D., V.V. and B.K.S. reviewed and edited the paper. F.C. and E.S. performed visualization. B.K.S. supervised the project.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bonnielin K. Swenor.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Human Behaviour thanks Ilhom Akobirshoev, Kristina Petersen and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Fig. 1–4, Tables 1 and 2, and Methods 1.

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Castro, F., Stuart, E., Deal, J. et al. STEM doctorate recipients with disabilities experienced early in life earn lower salaries and are underrepresented among higher academic positions. Nat Hum Behav 8, 72–81 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01745-z

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