How did school districts respond? By hiring TONS of emergency replacement teachers.

In 1941, < 1 in 400 teachers held an emergency license. By 1947? 1 in every 8 teachers.

According to the NYT, some were “taxicab drivers, mechanics, telephone operators, or retired janitors.” 😳

🚨Main Findings🚨

For the school-aged cohorts, a 1 SD increase in missing teachers reduces

- HS graduation by 1.6 pp (2.5%)
- College graduation by 0.4 pp (3.6%)
- Weekly wage by 1.9%. That’s ~$40k in lifetime earnings for a full-time worker.

This means places with more pre-war male teachers were harder hit by the shock. I leverage variation in the pre-war gender composition of the teacher workforce to predict “missing teachers” during the war in each state.

First, which teachers were leaving and why? The shock is really driven by male teachers, about half of whom left the classroom for the military 👨‍🏫 ➡️ 🪖🫡.

Look at this drop in the male teacher share! The number of male teachers fell 35% from 1940-44.

By 1945, 1/3 of all teachers had left the profession since the start of the war. From 1940-44, the total number of teachers fell by more than any other 4-year period in the last century. This is a BIG shock.

Policymakers feared the consequences for students. So what happened to these kids?