Male and female faculty members are less likely than their counterparts in the fields of medicine and law to have children, according to a new study of professionals and fertility.

Nicholas H. Wolfinger, an associate professor at the University of Utah, is the lead author of a paper on the study, which used data from the 2000 U.S. Census. He is to present the paper, “Alone in the Ivory Tower: How Birth Events Vary Among Fast-Track Professionals,” on Friday at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, in New Orleans.

The paper says that male faculty members are 21 percent less likely than male physicians and 12 percent less likely than male lawyers to have children. The paper attributes the difference in part to doctors’ and lawyers’ higher incomes, which give them more money for day care.

In addition, the paper says, male doctors are more likely to have children because they are also twice as likely as male professors to be married to wives who do not have jobs. Male professors, by contrast, are more likely than male doctors or lawyers to be married to female professors, who are the least likely of women in the three professions to have babies.

In fact, the study found that female professors are 41 percent less likely than female doctors and 24 percent less likely than female lawyers to have children. Female faculty members, says the paper, are also more likely than their female counterparts in medicine and law to be divorced or separated. —Robin Wilson