Teacher relative salaries and their determinants: A study of Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay

In this study, I use household surveys for 1987 and 1996 and a monthly earnings equation that corrects for sample selection bias to estimate the salary of female teachers in comparison to salaries in other occupations. In the three countries, the percentage of teachers in the sample declines between the two years as the percentage of women in other occupations increases, although in Chile and Uruguay the total number of the teacher population increases slightly. The results indicate segmentation in teacher relative salaries by education levels. Teachers with secondary education diplomas tend to be either better off than other women or have salaries similar to those in other occupations, suggesting that teaching might recruit the most capable women with secondary education diplomas. Teachers with higher education diplomas, however, have lower relative monthly earnings than women in other occupations, particularly in Chile and Uruguay, suggesting that the countries recruit the least capable of women with higher education degrees. The exception is Argentina where relative salaries of women with higher education increase with time, and the country recruits the most able women among the pool of women with higher education. Findings also reveal regional differences in the relative salaries of teachers, particularly in those with secondary education degrees. Employment in teaching hinders women with secondary education in the interior, while in the capital cities where the opportunities for women with secondary education are greater but expand slowly, employment in education benefits women. In a second stage and employing a relative-salaries regression model and data from economic, labor, and education statistics, I use the case of Argentina to investigate how changes in teacher supply and demand during the previous ten years impact teacher relative salaries in 1996. The results indicate that only one factor predicts educator relative salaries in 1996: educator relative salaries rise slightly for each percentage increase in the supply of unemployed educated women. Shifts in the other supply and demand factors do not affect the relative salaries of educators in 1996.