When male physicians have daughters, their female patients experience better health outcomes. A new working paper by Professor Tianyi Wang of the Department of Economics and his co-authors suggests that the empathy that grows from fathering daughters leads male physicians to order more tests and confirm diagnoses earlier, creating better treatment outcomes for female patients who experience breast cancer and gynecological cancers.
“Specifically, female patients cared for by male physicians with one additional daughter (compared to one additional son) are 5.5% less likely to die from female-specific cancers, including breast and gynecologic cancers,” reads the study The Power of Daughters: How Physicians’ Family Influences Female Patients’ Health, posted by the National Bureau of Economics Research (NBER). “This improvement in outcomes appears to stem from enhanced cancer screening and preventive efforts, leading to earlier detection and more successful prevention.”
The data analysis did not show any improvements in outcomes for male patients, nor among patients of female physicians.
“The effects apply only to female patients, suggesting that having daughters brings something unique to male physicians, translating into better care for female patients,” Professor Wang said.
The inspiration for the study came from earlier research investigating how parenting female children affected male politicians’ voting records while Professor Wang was a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen.
“One day, I came across an influential article about US congressmen with daughters being more likely to vote liberally on women’s rights issues,” Professor Wang recalled. “I thought, ‘wait! Could something similar happen in healthcare? Could the gender of physicians’ children, particularly daughters, affect their behavior and decision-making, and consequently, patient outcomes?’ This question seemed important for both researchers and the public to know, and it also has policy implications.”
After discussion with his colleagues and co-authors, the team applied to access data from Danish population registers. These extensive administrative statistics, provided by Statistics Denmark, includes the entire population, providing both detailed records of individual health and socioeconomic characteristics.
“This data is typically used by researchers in Denmark,” Professor Wang explained. “We could link each person to their physicians and observe detailed characteristics of their health outcomes, family backgrounds, and more. This data allows us to track a lot of information over a long period, which is unique to Scandinavian population registers.”
In their baseline analysis, the research team looked only at solo practitioners, but to better understand the mechanism, they later examined larger clinics that host group practices. They found that male physicians with daughters were more likely to partner with female colleagues. The researchers then examine the phenomenon through time-specific public health events affecting women’s health.
“We examined two major health information shocks in Denmark. The first concerned oral contraceptives and the other concerning the introduction of the HPV vaccine,” Wang said. “In 2011, it was discovered that the latest generation of the contraceptive pill had more risks, such as blood clots. We found that male physicians with daughters were more likely to switch their patients back to the older, safer generation of the pill, indicating they were more attentive to female health guidelines. Similarly, we looked at uptake of the HPV vaccine for girls around 13 years old, when they should receive their first dose. There was a large media scare and misinformation about the HPV vaccine in the mid-2010s, with people worrying about side effects. We found that male physicians with daughters were more likely to ensure their female patients received the vaccine, suggesting that the patients had greater trust in these physicians.”
Return to the Department of Economics website.
Scroll more news.