| This dissertation consists of three empirical works on labor in general and education in particular.;Chapter 2. I draw on the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 to identify a possible mechanism that drives the shortage of math and science teachers and the feminization of teaching. Controlling for self-selection by a propensity score matching estimator and the Heckit, I find that the returns to math skills in non-teaching jobs are twice as high as those in teaching. It has been argued that the higher returns to math skills in non-teaching jobs attract workers with high math skills to the non-teaching sector (leading to shortages of qualified math and science teachers). An earnings gap, potentially due to discrimination, is observed against women in the non-teaching sector. Along with this earnings gap, the lower female mean of math skills seems to provide women with an incentive to teach (the feminization of teaching).;Chapter 3. Using the Schools and Staffing Survey (1993-1994) and the Teacher Follow-up Survey (1994-1995), I estimate the relationship between workgroup racial diversity and the turnover of White teachers. I find that young White teachers are more likely to stay in their original schools when the proportion of minority teachers is smaller. However, the opposite pattern emerges for older teachers. This poses a policy dilemma for catching two rabbits at a time, i.e., recruiting and retaining teachers on the one hand and diversifying teaching staff on the other hand.;Chapter 4. In the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Cohort, I find that the gender gap is not uniform across the distribution of math skills and that these quantile-specific gaps vary with age. Specifically, girls at the top of the distribution initially fall behind boys, but they catch up to boys later. At the same time, girls in the lower parts of the distribution lose ground. In fifth grade, a gap of 0.2 standard deviation between girls and boys is observed across the entire distribution. These results demonstrate important dynamics of the gap that are relevant for policy, but that the mean gap fails to show. |
