High School Dropout Rates
Bernie Lubell | December 8, 2011 11:00 am
Chicago is home to the third largest public school district in the country, and it's a system that's plagued by a high dropout rate. A new study has taken a closer look at the individual and societal costs of dropping out. Andrew Sum, professor of Economics and director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, conducted the study. He shared the key findings with Chicago Tonight.
Key Findings:
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Societal costs: High school dropouts cost society money -- and average of about $70,000 during their working years. Those with a high school diploma, however, make a lifetime contribution to the economy of about $236,000, on average. This is a difference between groups of more than $300,000.
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Lifetime earnings: The average lifetime earnings of U.S.-born high school dropouts in Illinois was $595,000. High school graduates earned an average of $1,066,000; and for those with an associate’s degree: $1,509,000.
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Assets: Less than half of dropouts in Illinois -- 46 percent -- own a home, compared with 61 percent of high school graduates, and 70 percent of those with an associate’s degree.
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Social welfare costs: Just under one-third of high school dropouts receive food stamps, compared with 17.3 percent of high school graduates, and 8.6 percent of associate’s degree holders.
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Incarceration rates: Among 18 to 34-year-old males, 14.7 percent of high school dropouts were incarcerated in 2010, while only 3 percent of male high school graduates spent time behind bars.
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Racial differences: Among 19- to 24-year-olds in the City of Chicago
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15 percent did not have a high school diploma
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19 percent of males did not have a high school diploma
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30 percent of Hispanic males did not have a high school diploma
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27 percent of African American males did not have a high school diploma
Nearly 42,000 of those aged 19 to 24 in Chicago do not have a regular high school diploma.
Sum also said high school dropouts have decreased marriage rates, and are far less likely to vote, volunteer and provide civic services.
To learn more, check out the full PDF file of Andrew Sum's study on the economic cost of high school dropout
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Comments
"High School Dropout Rates"
So how about a study on the full costs of unemployment and underemployment among college graduates? It's a lot of income and taxes sacrificed on the altar of faked-up superfluity. Or is this waste okay because college graduates are so much less likely than high-school dropouts to become incarcerated?
Using maps to build prevention strategy
I attended the event at the Union League Club on Dec. 7 and I was a speaker at the National Drop Out Prevention Conference in October. I've written about this in blog articles posted since 2005 and prior to that in newsletters sent to business, political and philanthropic leaders. I've included maps in many of my articles to show how these can be used to help us understand where the drop out and education crisis is most severe and to show how poverty contributes to this. These maps are on the internet. Just search Google for Chicago Poverty Maps. If leaders, volunteers and donors use maps like this we can build a collective effort in many neighborhoods that leads to more comprehensive birth-to-work strategies, greater involvement of people who don't live in poverty, and ultimately more of the political will needed to create policy and funding that does more to help reduce the drop out numbers in Illinois and in other states. See http://tutormentor.blogspot.com and http://www.tutormentorexchange.net to see maps and ways they can be used.
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