Educational Inequality and the Poverty Trap in Teacher Recruitment

The regional concentration of poverty and the resulting disparities in living conditions create conditions where educational inequalities are intensified. These adverse conditions could lead teachers to refuse to work in disadvantaged locations that are characterised by high incidences of poverty an...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of development studies 2023-05, Vol.59 (5), p.716-738
Main Authors: Lentini, Valeria, Gimenez, Gregorio, Valbuena, Javier
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
developing countries
Educational inequality
inequality
Living conditions
Poverty
Probability
Recruitment
Resource allocation
School districts
Schools
Social acceptance
Teachers
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Summary:The regional concentration of poverty and the resulting disparities in living conditions create conditions where educational inequalities are intensified. These adverse conditions could lead teachers to refuse to work in disadvantaged locations that are characterised by high incidences of poverty and low-performing students. In this paper, we estimate how poverty in the districts where the schools are situated influences the probability that teachers accept a job offer in Costa Rica. Working with data on contract offers acceptance or rejection is a methodological novelty that makes it possible to dissociate students' poverty from the poverty of the schools' location. The estimation of a three-level hierarchical model allows us to deal with aggregation bias and unobserved heterogeneity. The results show evidence that district poverty is a key determinant of teachers' rejection of offers. Although the study uses data from Costa Rica, the results indicate more generally, how educational inequity can perpetuate poverty.
ISSN:0022-0388
1743-9140
DOI:10.1080/00220388.2023.2172330