Título: Teachers' preferences for incentives to work in disadvantaged districts: a discrete choice experiment in Costa Rica
Sala: E28
Hora: 12.30
Abstract: Designing incentives to attract the best teachers to low-performing schools becomes a fundamental objective in educational equity. We analyze the case of Costa Rica, where the most experienced teachers usually choose to work in the Central Region of the country. We carried out a discrete choice experiment with a sample of 400 teachers in 52 schools, aiming to elicit their preferences to work at schools located in disadvantaged regions. Although the findings suggest that pecuniary incentives are the most effective to increase the probability of teachers accepting contracts in disadvantaged locations, non-pecuniary incentives (working with highly qualified peers, direct access to supervisors of educational programs, and provision of material resources) are found to be important complements in the design of incentive packages. The possibility of combining incentives is especially relevant in educational systems of developing countries facing high internal inequalities and strong financial constraints.