What you do in high school matters: High School GPA, educational attainment, and labor market earnings as a young adult

Michael T. French; Jenny F. Homer; Ioana Popovici; Philip K. Robins

doi:10.1057/eej.2014.22

What you do in high school matters: High School GPA, educational attainment, and labor market earnings as a young adult

Michael T. French
, Jenny F. Homer
, Ioana Popovici
, Philip K. Robins

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

122 Scopus citations

Abstract

Using abstracted grades and other data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health, we investigate the relationships between cumulative high school grade point average (GPA), educational attainment, and labor market earnings among a sample of young adults (ages 24-34). We estimate several models with an extensive list of control variables and high school fixed effects. Results consistently show that high school GPA is a positive and statistically significant predictor of educational attainment and earnings in adulthood. Moreover, the coefficient estimates are large and economically important for each gender. Interesting and somewhat unexpected findings emerge for race in that, after controlling for innate ability, academic performance, and other economic and demographic variables, African Americans advance further in the formal educational system than their White counterparts. Various sensitivity tests support the stability of the core findings.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	370-386
Number of pages	17
Journal	Eastern Economic Journal
Volume	41
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1057/eej.2014.22
State	Published - May 19 2014

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 EEA.

Funding

This research uses data from Add Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and funded by grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations.

ASJC Scopus Subject Areas

Economics and Econometrics

Keywords

Earnings
educational attainment
high school grades
panel data

Disciplines

Economics

Access to Document

10.1057/eej.2014.22

Cite this

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title = "What you do in high school matters: High School GPA, educational attainment, and labor market earnings as a young adult",

abstract = "Using abstracted grades and other data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health, we investigate the relationships between cumulative high school grade point average (GPA), educational attainment, and labor market earnings among a sample of young adults (ages 24-34). We estimate several models with an extensive list of control variables and high school fixed effects. Results consistently show that high school GPA is a positive and statistically significant predictor of educational attainment and earnings in adulthood. Moreover, the coefficient estimates are large and economically important for each gender. Interesting and somewhat unexpected findings emerge for race in that, after controlling for innate ability, academic performance, and other economic and demographic variables, African Americans advance further in the formal educational system than their White counterparts. Various sensitivity tests support the stability of the core findings.",

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AU - Robins, Philip K.

PY - 2014/5/19

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AB - Using abstracted grades and other data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health, we investigate the relationships between cumulative high school grade point average (GPA), educational attainment, and labor market earnings among a sample of young adults (ages 24-34). We estimate several models with an extensive list of control variables and high school fixed effects. Results consistently show that high school GPA is a positive and statistically significant predictor of educational attainment and earnings in adulthood. Moreover, the coefficient estimates are large and economically important for each gender. Interesting and somewhat unexpected findings emerge for race in that, after controlling for innate ability, academic performance, and other economic and demographic variables, African Americans advance further in the formal educational system than their White counterparts. Various sensitivity tests support the stability of the core findings.

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What you do in high school matters: High School GPA, educational attainment, and labor market earnings as a young adult

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Funding

ASJC Scopus Subject Areas

Keywords

Disciplines

Access to Document

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