Teacher Salary Structure and the Decision to Teach in Public Schools: An Analysis of Recent College Graduates

February 2005
Dan Goldhaber, Albert Yung-Hsu Liu

Download Full Report (PDF: 634 K)

CRPE Working Paper #2005-3

This paper explores the structure of compensation for a sample of recent female college graduates to assess how opportunity costs influence the decision to enter the teaching profession. Using the Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study, we estimate separate wage regressions for public school teachers and for those employed outside the teaching profession and account for self-selection into occupation using the Heckman two-step correction.

We find salary structure differences between labor markets that result in the greatest predicted opportunity costs to enter the teaching profession for women with technical training and the lowest predicted opportunity costs for women with education degrees. Structural probit estimates indicate that greater opportunity cost of wages negatively influences the probability of entering the teaching profession.

Additional Information