Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

A large literature investigates the determinants of teacher labor supply (i.e., entry into the profession). However, whether teaching is transmitted inter-generationally from parents to children has yet to be investigated. Given longstanding racial gaps in college completion and evidence that wages and educational attainment are transmitted across generations, this is a potential explanation for the under-representation of black and Hispanic teachers. Similarly, if fathers transmit professions to their sons, this could explain the persistence of longstanding gender imbalances in the teaching profession.

This study begins to fill this gap in the literature on teacher labor supply by testing whether the children of teachers are themselves more likely to become teachers than are the children of other types of college-educated professionals. We test whether the intergenerational persistence of teaching varies by parent or child sex, race, and household composition. Finally, we will test whether teaching is more or less persistent a profession than other female-dominated professions, such as nursing.

We address these questions using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) 1979 cohort, which is a nationally representative survey of U.S. citizens who were young adults in 1979. The children of the original NLSY-79 cohort were also surveyed into young adulthood, so that we can observe both the educational attainment and occupation of parents and adults.