Decomposing public-private teachers’ wage gap: evidence from Brazil

Resumo

A two-stage wage gap decomposition permits measuring the contribution of observable
and unobservable characteristics of the wage gap formation and evolution comparing
teachers’ earnings in the public and private sectors from 2006 to 2017. Teachers from
the public sector earn more than the ones from the private sector at mean, median, and
quantile 10 due to the composition effect. The analysis across levels of education shows
that the composition effect is important in explaining the wage gap in early childhood
education while the structure effect is more relevant to the wage gap decomposition in
primary and high school education.