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SEPTEMBER 2004

Teachers' Wage Gap Growing:
A Review of How Does Teacher Pay Compare?
By Dorothy Davis

The wage gap between teachers and workers in fields requiring similar skills is widening. So concludes The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) in its new book, How Does Teacher Pay Compare? Methodological Challenges and Answers by Sylvia A. Allegretto, Sean P. Corcoran and Lawrence Mishel.

Teachers earn appreciably less per week than do comparable professionals, including accountants, registered nurses, computer programmers and personnel officers. According to the EPI study, "Several types of analyses show that teachers earn significantly less than comparable workers and this wage disadvantage has grown considerably over the last ten years. Since 1993, female teacher wages have fallen behind 13 percent and male teacher wages 12.5 percent."

Several recent analyses using flawed data in the relatively new Bureau of Labor Statistics' National Compensation Survey (NCS) have claimed not only that the hourly wages of teachers are equivalent to those of other similar professionals, but also that when the benefits teachers receive are factored in teachers were actually well paid.

Not so, says the EPI study. Comparisons of hourly wages in the NCS are inappropriate because work time measurement for professionals with regular year-round schedules is inconsistent with the measurement of teachers' work time. Moreover, teachers' health and pension benefits, while a bit better than those of other professionals, only lower the teacher wage disadvantage by 1.5 percent-from, for example, 14 percent to 12.5 percent. Also, teacher benefits have not improved relative to other professionals since 1994 (the first year for which data are available), indicating that the erosion of teachers' relative wages has not been offset by improved benefits.

The Economic Policy Institute was founded in 1986 by a group of leading economic policy experts including The Honorable Robert Reich, the former U. S. Secretary of Labor, now a Brandeis University professor and economist Lester Thurow of MIT's Sloan School of Management. Its focus is the economic condition of low and middle class Americans and their families. They believe it is important "that people who work for a living have a voice in the economic debate."

EPI does research and conducts outreach and education in five major fields: Living standards/labor markets; Government and the economy; Globalization and Trade; Education, and Retirement Policy.

They have recently published two other books on education. Smart Money-Education and Economic Development by William Schweke-why the United States' investment in education will pay huge dividends and Class and Schools by Richard Rothstein, co-published with Teachers College, Columbia University-why the increased use of testing and other reforms at the school level by federal and state officials is not narrowing the achievement gap between black and white students.#

For further information and to order books see The Economic Policy Institute's website at www.epinet.org.

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