An Analysis of Occupational Change and Departure from the Labor Force: Evidence of the Reasons that Teachers Leave

Unlike previous research on teacher decisions in the United States, this paper looks at not only the timing of exits from the teaching profession, but also the reasons for these exits. Contrary to the common notion that teaching exits are primarily the result of teachers being “lured ” away from teaching by the attractiveness of non!teaching job alternatives, this analysis find that approximately sixty percent of all exiting teachers leave the work force altogether. The reasons for teaching exits are found to differ substantially by gender. The paper discusses why, in general, studies of quit behavior which simply include a measure of a person’s total number of children will typically fail to capture the true importance of fertility behavior on a female’s quit decision. When an alternative measure, which indicates whether a new child has been born in the current year, is also used, family variables are found to entirely explain significant gender differences which exist in the probability that a person will leave the work force. The findings have direct implications on current education debates, including debates regarding commonly proposed wage increases for teachers. Acknowledgements: I would like to thank John Bound, Bob Willis, Kathy Hayes, Susanna Loeb, Christopher Swann, and participants at The University of Michigan, and the 1997 Southern Economic Association Meetings for useful comments. The labor supply decisions of elementary and secondary school teachers during the early stages of their careers have received considerable attention. The potential importance of this issue is highlighted by a recent United States Department of Education Study which projects that, due to