Determinants of Moonlighting of Teaching Professionals in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Moonlighting; holding two or more jobs by one individual has become a key feature in the current labour market in Sri Lanka. The majority of professionals moonlight due to financial motives, heterogeneity motives, flexibility motives or hours constraint motives. The main objective of this paper is to identify the determinants of moonlighting of teaching professionals in Sri Lanka. Teaching professionals recorded the highest rate of moonlighting among the professionals. The study uses two Labour Force Survey (LFS) data of 2015 and 2016, taken from the Department of Census and Statistics of Sri Lanka. It includes 2,705 observations on teaching professionals. Binary logit regression model was used for the regression with moonlighting as the dependent variable. The study revealed that moonlighting among teaching professionals increases with age at a decreasing rate since opportunities are based on the experience. Male professionals have a high probability of moonlighting compared to females who face the triple burden of their productive, reproductive and social productive roles. Primary working hours make a negative impact on moonlighting hours. Increased literacy skills in Sinhala and English increase the probability of moonlighting. Being a school teaching professional has significant positive relationship with moonlighting compared to non-schooling teaching professionals. This might be due to hours constraint motive and the financial motive. Further, wage policies and the regulatory policies towards moonlighting would help to increase the efficiency of the education sector of Sri Lanka.