Home Subscribe Login Contact Us Search Journal Articles PFM RSS Feed

PFM Articles Search Journal Articles

Does the Dropout Age Matter? How Mandatory Schooling Laws Impact High School Completion and School Choice

JENNIE W. WENGER
PFM, Vol. 2 No. 4, (2002)

This paper examines the role of states’ mandatory schooling ages
using the High School and Beyond data set merged with various state-level
data sources. After controlling for potential endogeneity of the state
mandatory schooling age, I find that a higher mandatory schooling age
significantly increases the probability that a public school student will
complete high school, as well as the probability the student will choose to
attend a public school rather than a private school. Thus, a state’s
mandatory schooling age affects educational attainment. Additionally, by
influencing the public - private school decision, a change in a state’s
mandatory schooling laws will affect the results of any school choice
experiment.

Subscribers: Login to read this article

Guests: Subscribe to PFM, or purchase individual article access for $10.
The article is not available for automatic download. We will email the article to you as a PDF file upon receiving your payment, typically within 24 hours.