The Scouting Report: A weekly digest

Dakota doctors make bank, suffragist goes digital, population alarmism, sloth bear attack

Photo by JC Gellidon on Unsplash

A deep dive into professional pay by The Washington Post found that doctors – as in real doctors, medical doctors – are the highest earning professionals during their prime earning years. The study found that physicians aged 40-55 averaged $405,000 a year across the country.

That likely surprises no one.

But a surprise did exist in the data: The study found that doctors in the Dakotas are the highest paid in the country. Doctors in South Dakota averaged $524,000 a year in their prime years and $468,000 in North Dakota, based on pay in 2017. The high incomes in the Dakotas are even more surprising when cost of living is added to the equation. Cost of living in North Dakota ranks 41^st and 45^th in South Dakota. Other rural areas also have doctors that make more than the national average.

So what’s behind this?