Relationship between Financial Stress, Moonlighting and Teacher Attrition

The widely acknowledged low salaries of teachers makes them deficit units who often seek loans from banks or engage in hire purchases in their bid to smoothing consumption within their households. Despite the financial stress that comes with such tendencies (as a corollary) and its effect on teacher attrition, previous studies have remained silent on this phenomenon. We sought to ascertain the effect of financial stress and moonlighting on teacher attrition using data collected from 1,360 Senior High Schools teachers in three administrative regions in Ghana. Our findings show that teachers who are financially stressed are 6 percent more likely to exit the classroom while those who moonlight are 10 percent more likely to leave the classroom. With teachers' high probability of repayments of credit, we ask that they should be given a special concession on loan interests or paid well so that they do not become financially stressed