Working Paper: NBER ID: w31869
Authors: Flavio Cunha; Marcos Lee
Abstract: The quality of the early environment children experience influences their human capital development. We investigate retention and compensation in the Early Care and Education workforce by merging datasets from three different government agencies in Texas. We employ non-structural methods to compare turnover and pay in Early Care and Education with those in other sectors that employ similar workers. We estimate a dynamic discrete choice occupational model to quantify the labor supply and turnover elasticities in this industry. In addition, we simulate the impact of wage supplementation programs.
Keywords: early care and education; turnover; compensation; labor supply; wage supplementation
JEL Codes: I20; J24; J39; J49
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| working in the early care and education sector (I20) | turnover rates (J63) |
| working in the early care and education sector (I20) | wages (J31) |
| educational attainment (I21) | turnover rates (J63) |
| educational attainment (I21) | earnings penalty in the ECE sector (J31) |
| educational attainment (high school diploma) and race (African American) (I24) | earnings penalty (J31) |
| educational attainment (four-year college degree) and race (African American) (I24) | earnings penalty (J31) |
| working in the early care and education sector (I20) | elasticity of labor supply (J22) |
| working in the early care and education sector (I20) | turnover elasticity (J60) |
| compensation policies (M52) | retention (M51) |