Skills and selection into teaching: Evidence from Latin America

Ricardo Estrada and Maria Lombardi

No 1628, Research Department working papers from CAF Development Bank Of Latinamerica

Abstract: This paper documents a novel stylized fact: many teachers in Latin America have very low levels of cognitive skills. This skills deficit is the result of both low levels of competencies among the population and a gap between the average skill level of teachers and the rest of the tertiary-educated population (i.e., a teacher skills gap). Furthermore, we observe that individuals with a teaching degree have lower average skills than individuals with other tertiary degrees, and that this gap is larger than the teacher skills gap. This difference is mainly explained by the selection into teaching of graduates from non-teaching degrees. Finally, we show that even controlling for cognitive skills, teachers have lower monthly wages than other professionals, and provide direct evidence that this gap is increasing in skills.

Keywords: Desarrollo; Educación; Equidad e inclusión social (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-ure
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://scioteca.caf.com/handle/123456789/1628

Related works:
Working Paper: Skills and selection into teaching: evidence from Latin America (2023)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dbl:dblwop:1628

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Research Department working papers from CAF Development Bank Of Latinamerica Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Pablo Rolando ().