Poster #112 - Changes in Stress Following Wage Increases for Early Childhood Educators: A Natural Experimental Study

• In Event: Poster Session 09

Abstract

A nationally representative observational study showed that the strongest predictor of early childhood teacher turnover was low wages (Caven et al., 2021), which may be placing early educators at risk for toxic stress. In 2017, the average median hourly wage for all early childhood professionals was at poverty level: $10.72/hour (Whitebook et al., 2018). These low wages are not commensurate with the challenging workload of early educators (Bullough et al., 2014; Sakai et al., 2014) and may contribute to their disproportionately high levels of stress (Otten et al., 2019). Stress can include many symptoms, such as perceived stress (e.g., anxiety, depression), physiologic stress (e.g., dysregulated stress hormones), and economic stress (e.g., food insecurity). For example, early educators have double the prevalence of depression (40%) than comparable women living with low income (20%), and 42% of early educators were food insecure, as compared to 12% of overall US households (Otten et al., 2019). Early educators’ low wages may also be contributing to racial, gender, and health disparities in the United States, as most are female and disproportionately of color (McLean et al., 2021), and stress is a major underpinning of chronic disease (Anda et al., 2006; Cohen et al., 2007). Hence, increasing the wages of early childhood teachers may reduce teacher stress, in turn improving retention (Barnett, 2003; Gambaro, 2017) and disparities. However, no known study has examined how increasing early educators’ wages without a workload increase (e.g., Otten et al., 2019) may reduce early childhood educators’ stress. This longitudinal pilot study aims to observe changes in teacher stress over one academic year during a natural experiment. Early childhood (0-5 years old) teachers in one center were recently provided with a sustainable wage increase (up to $5/hour from a large, private donation) and will be compared to teachers across twelve control centers with no planned wage increase. Stress was measured with surveys and physiologically through hair cortisol concentration at two time points. Results are in progress, as laboratory analysis of hair cortisol is underway. We will compare changes in teachers’ stress by natural experimental group (n = 1 center; 22 teachers) and control group (n = 12 centers; 45 teachers) using t-tests, controlling for wages and demographic characteristics of the teachers, and adjusting for multiple stress-tests by Bonferroni corrections. We hypothesize that teachers’ stress will decrease in the natural experimental group but will remain unchanged in the control group. This pilot project aligns with the SRCD vision and strategic goals by advancing developmental science through studying the communities of teachers that serve children 0-5 years of age. Information from this project will directly inform causal experimental studies on the effects of increasing early childhood teachers’ wages and its effects on teacher and child wellbeing.

Authors

• Randi Bates, University of Cincinnati
  Presenting Author

• Jaclyn Dynia, SproutFive

• Abel Koury, Far Harbor

• Erin Barker, University of Cincinnati