The Changing Nature of Teachers: Evidence from Four Decades of Employment Surveys

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  In Roundtable Session: Contested Classrooms: Censorship, Polarization, and Teacher Policy in U.S. Education

Abstract

As low- and middle-income countries have expanded education, they have increased the size of their teaching cadre. The rapid growth in the teacher labor force comes at the same time as academic and policy attention has recognized the importance of teachers in providing high-quality education. I leverage four decades of employment surveys in Brazil and India and asks how the teacher labor force has changed over time. I find stark differences between Brazil and India, with higher compensation in Brazil accompanied by an older and more male workforce, while decreasing wages in India accompanied by a younger and more female workforce. I then fit a random forest model to construct counterfactuals on the pool of potential teachers in both countries.

Author

• Emmerich Davies, Harvard University