The american high school graduation rate : trends and levels

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 high school graduation rate is substantially lower than widely used measures; (b) the U.S. graduation rate peaked in the early 1970s; (c) majority/minority differentials are substantial and have not converged over the past 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 the rise in college wage premiums; and (f) growing high school graduation differentials by gender help explain increasing male-female college attendance gaps