Knowledge that Transforms

Using March Current Population Survey data, we investigate married women’s labor supply from 1980 to 2000. We find a large rightward shift in their labor supply function for annual hours in the 1980s, with little shift in the 1990s. These shifts account for most of the slowdown in the growth of labor supply during this period. A major development was the dramatic decrease in the responsiveness of married women’s labor supply to their own and husbands’ wages: their own wage elasticity fell by 50%–56%, while their cross wage elasticity fell by 38%–47% in absolute value.

We estimate the importance of teachers in Chicago public high schools using matched student-teacher administrative data. A one standard deviation, one semester improvement in math teacher quality raises student math scores by 0.13 grade equivalents or, over 1 year, roughly one-fifth of average yearly gains. Estimates are relatively stable over time, reasonably impervious to a variety of conditioning variables, and do not appear to be driven by classroom sorting or selective score reporting. Also, teacher quality is particularly important for lower-ability students. Finally, traditional human capital measures—including those determining compensation—explain little of the variation in estimated quality.