High School Exit Examinations and Labor Market Outcomes Among Young Adults

National Science Foundation.  Principal Investigator:  John Robert Warren.

Since the early 1980s many states have implemented policies that require high school students to pass exit examinations in order to obtain high school diplomas. A central reason that states implement these policies is to improve the labor market productivity of young people with high school diplomas. Warren’s project uses 1980 to 2000 Census data and 1977 to 2003 CPS data to ask whether state high school exit examinations impact the earnings, poverty rates, employment status, and public assistance use of high school graduates.