The American High School Graduation Rate: Trends and Levels
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This paper applies a unified methodology to multiple data sets to estimate both the levels and trends in U.S. high school graduation rates. We establish that (a) the true rate is substantially lower than widely used measures, (b) it peaked in the early 1970s, (c) majority-minority differentials are substantial and have not converged for 35 years, (d) lower post-1970 rates are not solely due to increasing immigrant and minority populations, (e) our findings explain part of the slowdown in college attendance and rising college wage premiums, and (f) widening graduation differentials by gender help explain increasing male-female college attendance gaps.
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About one in four American students drops out of formal schooling before receiving a high school diploma, and in recent decades the dropout rate has increased slightly.
“About one in four American students drops out of formal schooling before receiving a high school diploma, and in recent decades the dropout rate has increased slightly (Heckman and LaFontaine [2010]).”
From Personality Psychology and Economics (2011) · cites this paper as Heckman and LaFontaine [2010]
A 2010 study by Heckman and Lafontaine found a steady decline in the high school graduation rates in the US since 1970s.
“Yet, a 2010 study by Heckman and Lafontaine found a steady decline in the high school graduation rates in the US since 1970s [57].”
From Long-term effects of mental disorders on educational attainment in the National Comorbidity Survey ten-year follow-up (2015) · cites this paper as [57]
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Cornwell, C. M., Mustard, D. B., & Parys, J. V. (2013) · The Journal of Human Resources · doi:10.3368/jhr.48.1.236 · Cited by 70 · see citing works
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- Authors
- Heckman, J. J., & LaFontaine, P. A.
- Affiliations
- University College Dublin (IE)
- American Bar Association (US)
- ORCID
- Heckman, James J
- Venue
- Review of Economics and Statistics
- Publisher
- MIT Press - Journals
- Published
- 2010-05
- Volume
- 92
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 244-262
- ISSN
- 0034-6535 (ISSN-L)
- 1530-9142
- PMC
- PMC2900934
- OpenAlex
- W2140410834
- Cited by
- 568
- References
- 31
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 19 · 2021: 16 · 2020: 30 · 2019: 25 · 2018: 31 · 2017: 40 · 2016: 45 · 2015: 58 · 2014: 50 · 2013: 48 · 2012: 44
- FWCI
- 107.34
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Locations
- The Review of Economics and Statistics (publishedVersion)
- National Bureau of Economic Research (publishedVersion)
- SSRN Electronic Journal (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Research Repository UCD (University College Dublin) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- SSRN Electronic Journal (submittedVersion)
- Arrow@dit (Dublin Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion)
- Econstor (Econstor) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (P01-HD31921)
- American Bar Foundation
- University College Dublin
- National Institutes of Health (NIH-R01)
- National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P01-HD31921)
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01HD043411, P01HD031921, R01HD054702)
- Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (P01HD31921)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › Higher Education Research Studies
- Social Sciences › Education › School Choice and Performance
- Social Sciences › Education › Educational Outcomes and Influences
- Keywords
- high school graduation rates, immigrant students, college attendance, college wage premium, educational attainment, United States
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Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
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