But over time, the economic rationale for becoming a teacher has collapsed. In a recent report for the Economic Policy Institute and the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Allegretto — a senior economist at CEPR — finds that a profession that once offered women a 15 percent pay premium now punishes them with a 21 percent pay penalty. That means, compared to what other college-educated women are making, female teachers earn about 79 cents on the dollar.

And the penalty for male teachers is even worse. Since college-educated men tend to make more than college-educated women, becoming a teacher imposes a 36 percent pay penalty on a man, which is likely why three-quarters of teachers are women.

The dearth of male teachers can have consequences. In a country where boys have fallen behind girls academically, “it helps to have men in the classroom,” says Michael Zilles, president of the Newton Teachers Association and a longtime Spanish and English teacher. “I’ve seen it. [And] it helps to have people of color.”

But that’s not how things are going.

“The pipelines are drying up,” says Allegretto. “If you’re a kid in college today ... you’re saying: “If I become a teacher, what is this trend going to look like next year, or in three years or five years from now?’”

In Arlington, for example, a new teacher with both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree would have made $59,210 during the 2023-2024 school year. That’s more than $22,000 below the per capita income in Arlington, making it difficult to buy a house (in a town whose median sale price is nearing a million dollars).

Though salaries vary widely across districts and experience levels, salaries for young teachers tend to be particularly low, meaning that even highly educated people — with considerable subject knowledge and, often, sizable student loans — have to spend years working their way up the pay scale.

In Massachusetts, Allegretto finds, the pay penalty for teaching versus other white-collar professions — about 20 percent — is slightly less than the national average. In New Hampshire, it’s far worse, at nearly 32 percent. Rhode Island, by contrast, has one of the smallest penalties in the nation for teachers — 10 percent — behind only Wyoming (9 percent).

Of course, teachers tend to receive a very different set of benefits than other college-educated workers. They frequently get more robust health care coverage and retirement plans, as well as more days (and summers) off. But, Allegretto says, even adjusting for that, the pay penalty for teaching is still yawning: nearly 17 percent nationwide. (Plus, she argues that teachers’ much-heralded benefit of more days off comes with a notable downside: You have essentially no control over when to take vacation.)

“The attractiveness and decline in prestige is concerning for the profession,” says Olivia Chi, an assistant professor at Boston University’s Wheelock College of Education and Human Development.

Chi, a former elementary school teacher in Connecticut, says we need to think about structural ways to shore up the industry. That includes making sure teachers feel supported and ensuring that people respect teaching as an occupation.

But the last 15 years have proved catastrophic for teaching, when it comes to both societal and economic value. In a 2024 paper, Matthew Kraft, an associate professor of education at Brown, and Melissa Arnold Lyon, an assistant professor of public administration and policy at the University of Albany, found that “the overall wellbeing of the teaching profession today is at or near historically low levels.”

Research shows that a majority of parents do not want their children to pursue teaching. In a 2022 survey, just 18 percent of adults surveyed said they were “likely to encourage their child or another younger person to become a K-12 teacher,” according to Kraft and Lyon. Not surprisingly, among high school seniors and college freshmen, interest in teaching has shrunk by nearly half since the 1990s. And the number of people seeking a teaching license has cratered since 2006.

Increasingly, schools must now seek alternative ways of staffing classrooms. A recent study finds that New Hampshire ranks first in the nation for its proportion of “underqualified teachers” — defined as a “teacher who is not fully certified by the respective state’s standards, or certified but in a subject area other than the respective teaching assignment.” Massachusetts ranks fifth.

“There are so many colleges with teacher-training programs that are drying up,” says Eric Salmonsen, who has spent most of his career teaching high school social studies in New Hampshire. Salmonsen thinks it’s especially important that senior teachers mentor younger teachers, helping convey the significance and joy of teaching.

But he acknowledges that — even apart from money — the flexible, post-COVID schedules that have remade many professions have not remade teaching. For the foreseeable future, it’s likely to remain a fully in-person job that starts early in the morning.

Multiple experts expressed concern about the fact that teachers in math, science, and computer science are generally paid the same amount as teachers in other subjects, which can lead to shortages in STEM offerings. “The reality is that if you have high technical abilities, there is likely a job [outside teaching] where you have not only higher wages but higher growth potential,” says Kraft.

And inadequately staffing schools in math and science further exacerbates social inequities. As research by Boston University and Harvard has shown, for-profit educational centers — such as Kumon and Mathnasium — have boomed in wealthy suburbs over the past 25 years. Such centers frequently offer rigorous math classes for students whose parents can pay to strengthen their abilities.

Recent data underscore these inequities. The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), released in early December, showed American children struggling in math compared to those in other wealthy nations. American fourth- and eighth-graders scored lower than they had in 2019. And the gap in math scores between the highest- and lowest-scoring American fourth-graders was enormous — one of the biggest in the world.

“We have a huge body of evidence that convincingly shows that teachers have large impacts on students’ academic and life outcomes,” Kraft told me. “We need to make it appealing to a broader group of individuals who bring with them the very best abilities. So we don’t just set the bar at staffing every classroom.”

In Zilles’ view, there’s a serious problem with the way we fund education in America. Currently, about half of funding comes from local governments, and much of the rest comes from state governments, with the federal government providing little support. That means wealthier schools tend to be better funded — and they can raise additional, voluntary pools of money. ”Municipalities just fend for themselves,” Zilles notes. “There is no incentive to think about the profession’s needs.”

So what’s the fix? In the long term, Allegretto argues that boosting teacher pay is a matter of political will. Kraft believes we shouldn’t rely so heavily on local municipalities, noting that efforts “to meaningfully raise teacher compensation in a sustained way will require substantial investments at the state level,” which could, in turn, be aided by federal incentives.

In the short term, says Chi, we could consider boosting pay for teachers in hard-to-staff subjects like math, science, and special education. Plus, she says, we could frontload the pay bumps that teachers tend to get later in their careers.

Zilles notes that he will retire in a few years, and he worries about what’s ahead for teaching. “I just pull my hair out,” he says.

Follow Kara Miller @karaemiller.