Stress in Boom Times: Understanding Teachers’ Economic Anxiety in a High Cost Urban District

Despite growing concern over teachers’ ability to live comfortably where they work, we know little about the systematic impacts of affordability on teachers’ well-being, particularly in highcost urban areas. We use novel survey data from San Francisco to identify the patterns and prevalence of economic anxiety among teachers and how this anxiety relates to teachers’ attitudes and behaviors. We find that San Francisco teachers have far higher levels of economic anxiety on average than a national sample of employed adults and that young teachers are particularly anxious. Furthermore, anxiety relates to job performance and
well-being economically anxious teachers tend to have more negative attitudes about their jobs, have worse attendance, and are more likely to be chronically absent.