Young people who fail to earn a high school diploma do so at enormous cost to themselves and to society, according to data presented at a 2005 conference at Teachers College, Columbia University, on the social costs of an inadequate education:
鈥� Over a lifetime, an 18-year-old who does not complete high school earns about $260,000 less than an individual with a high school diploma, and contributes about $60,000 less in federal and state income taxes. The combined income and tax losses aggregated over one cohort of 18-year-olds who do not complete high school is about $192 billion, or 1.6 percent of the gross domestic product. (Cecilia Elena Rouse, economist, Princeton University)
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鈥� Individuals with a high school diploma live longer, have better indicators of general health, and are less likely to use publicly financed health-insurance programs than high school dropouts. If the 600,000 18-year-olds who failed to graduate in 2004 had advanced one grade, it would save about $2.3 billion in publicly financed medical care, aggregated over a lifetime. (Peter Muennig, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University)
鈥� Adults who lack a high school diploma are at greater risk of being on public assistance. If all those receiving assistance who are high school dropouts instead had a high school diploma, the result would be a total cost savings for federal welfare spending, food stamps, and public housing of $7.9 billion to $10.8 billion a year. (Jane Waldfogel et al., Columbia University School of Social Work)
鈥� In the 2004 election, college graduates were nearly three times as likely to vote as Americans without a high school diploma. (Jane Junn, Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University)
鈥� High school dropouts are far more likely to commit crimes and be incarcerated than those with more education. A 1 percent increase in the high school completion rate of men ages 20 to 60 would save the United States as much as $1.4 billion a year in reduced costs from crime incurred by victims and society at large. (Enrico Moretti, economist, University of California, Berkeley)
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