Marigee Bacolod

Do Alternative Opportunities Matter? The Role of Female Labor Markets in the Decline of Teacher Quality

This paper documents the widely perceived but little investigated notion that teachers today are less qualified than they once were. Evidence of a marked decline in the quality of young women going into teaching between 1960 and 1990 is presented, using standardized test scores, undergraduate institution selectivity, and positive assortative mating characteristics as indicators of quality. In contrast, the quality of young women becoming professionals increased. The Roy model of self-selection highlights how occupational differences in the returns to skill determine teacher quality. Estimates suggest the significance of increasing professional opportunities for women in affecting the decline in teacher quality.

Two Sides of the Same Coin: U.S. "Residual" Inequality and the Gender Gap

We show that the narrowing gender gap and the growth in earnings inequality are consistent with a simple model in which skills are heterogeneous, and the growth in skill prices has been particularly strong for skills with which women are well endowed. Empirical analysis of DOT, CPS, and NLSY79 data finds evidence to support this model. A large increase in the prices of cognitive and people skills—skills with which women are well endowed—and a decline in the price of motor skills account for up to 40 percent of the rising inequality and 20 percent of the narrowing gender gap.

Who Teaches and Where They Choose to Teach: College Graduates of the 1990s

This article investigates the key determinants of entry into the teaching profession and the subsequent sorting of new teachers across urban, suburban, and rural schools. Of particular interest is the relative importance of teacher salaries, alternative labor market opportunities, and nonpecuniary job attributes or working conditions to this decision process. Results from a nested logit model applied to the Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study show that working conditions play a relatively more important role in determining where new teachers end up choosing to teach, rather than differences in teacher salaries. This is especially true for women. Meanwhile, wages play a relatively more important role in the occupational entry decision. In addition, there is significant variation in teacher quality indicators across these school locations.

Elements of Skill: Traits, Intelligences, Education, and Agglomeration

There are many fundamental issues in regional and urban economics that hinge on worker skills. This paper builds on psychological approaches to learning to characterize the role of education and agglomeration in the skill development process. While the standard approach of equating skill to worker education can be useful, there are important aspects of skill that are missed. Using a measure of skill derived from hedonic attribution, the paper explores the geographic distribution of worker traits, intelligences, and skills and considers the roles of urbanization and education in the skill development process.