El ingreso de los docentes en la Argentina: ¿es alto o bajo?

Relative income of teachers is analyzed in Argentina. A Mincerian income equation is estimated for a cross section sample of individuals from 1998 Permanent Household Survey (EPH) over twenty-nine metropolitan areas and a Oaxaca decomposition procedure is followed to ascertain whether characteristics or returns explain better the log mean difference in income of teachers and other relevant groups used for comparison. Hourly income of teachers are found to be higher than the average for the economy, slightly lower than that of workers with post-secondary studies, but lower definite respective of professionals. Characteristics is a critical source of teacher-non-teacher income differential. Its relative weight changes according to the group of comparison chosen. Substracting the effect of characteristics, income difference is reduced by 40 % in the total population, 16% in the post-secondary population but has the reverse effect of penalizing teachers vs professionals.