DROPOUTS AND THE UNEMPLOYED" BEVERLY DUNCAN University of Michigan media about the “dropout prob- lem” among teen-agers, we might infer that the proportion of youth leaving school before high-school graduation is at an all-time high. In fact, three-fifths of the boys who reached their sixteenth birthday between 1947 and 1951 com- pleted high school as compared with two- fiiths of the sixteen-year-olds of 1927-31 and one-fifth of the sixteen-year-olds of 1907-11, The record on high-school grad- uates among younger men still is incom- plete, but already three-fifths of the boys reaching sixteen between 1952 and 1958 have graduated from high school Only in some very special sense, then, can the dropout problem have become more seri- ous. ‘The fact that today school-leaving is more often deferred to the high-school level may make it more visible. Among members of the cohort of 1907-11 who failed to graduate from high school, only 17 per cent completed some high-school training. The others left school with no more than an elementary-school cduca- tion. Among members of the cohort of 1927-31 who failed to graduate from high school, 35 per cent had some high- F= current comment in the mass 1'The research reported herein was supported through the Cooperative Research Program of the Office of Education, US. Depsrtment of Health, Education, and Welfare. The clerical assistance of Ruthe C. Sweet is gratefully acknowledged. 2 The source of data for males reaching age sixteen in 1957 or later is U.S. Burean of the Consus, “Edu- cational Attainment: March 1962,” Current Popuda~ tion Reports, Series P-20, No. 121 (February 7, 1963), Table 1; data for older meles are drawn fro the Census of Population, 1960. school training; and among non-gradu- ates of the cohort of 1947-51, 52 per cent had some high-school training. Among today’s teen-agers, universal elementary- school education has become a near real- ity; and some 91 per cent of the sixteen- year-olds of 1959-60 had completed at least a year in the high-school system. As a consequence the percentage of non- graduates who have “dropped out” of high school will continue to rise in the near future. A slackening rate of increase in school attendance among boysin their mid-teens in recent ycars may offer another basis for concern. At the end of World War IT some 36 per cent of the boys aged 16 and 17 were not enrolled in school; by 1954 the proportion not enrolled had fallen to 19 per cent, a decrease averaging nearly two percentage points per year. Since 1954 a decrease of something less than one percentage point per ycar, on the average, has brought the proportion not enrolled to its new low of 11 per cent.® A longer time perspective and allowance for the ceiling on proportion enrolled may make the slackening rate of increase a lesser cause for concern. In its problematic aspects the dropout phenomenon clearly is bound up with the employment situation in current com- ment. In a series of Special Labor Force Reports on the employment of high- school graduates and dropouts, which dates from 1959, the Department of Labor #U.S. Bureaa of the Census, Current Population Reporls, Series P-20, annual reports on October school enrolment. 124 Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reseved.122 has emphasized the “less favorable labor market position of school dropouts com- pared with high school graduates. Fur- thermore, the situation for dropouts can be expected to worsen in the coming years, because little growth or some de- clines are expected in occupations with jow educational and skill requirements, and workers without at least a high school diploma will have increasing diffi- culty entering expanding occupations where educational and training qualifica- tions are high.’”* The survey data from which the dii- ferential labor-market position of gradu- ates and dropouts is inferred are by no means easy to interpret, however. If graduates in a given year are compared with non-graduates who last attended, school in that year, the modal graduate is something over a year older than the modal dropout. Ii graduates are com- pared with non-graduates of the same age, the modal graduate has had some- thing over a year less in which to effect entry into the labor force than has the modal non-graduate. Data of the 1960 Census of Population perhaps offer a better basis for age-specific comparisons of labor-force status for males with vary- ing attainment levels. Shown below are statistics for males aged 22 to 24, a group selected on the assumption that any short-run advantage accruing to drop- outs by virtue of younger labor-force en- try should be washed out. ‘The percent- age distributions by labor-force status within attainment levels were as shown in the tabulation in the adjoining column, Tf a moderate positive association be- tween educational attainment and innate ability to perform adequately on the job 4 Jacob Schilfman, “Employment of High School Graduates and Dropouts in 1962,” U.S. Depart- ment of Labor, Special Lalur Force Report, No. 32, p.2. BEVERLY DUNCAN is assumed, the differentials in Iabor- force status by attaimment may not seem: unduly large. Moreover, although the “labor-market position” of these young men improves as schooling increases, at least in 1960 a high-school diploma was no magic key to civilian employment. Another line of public discussion is di- rected to the low educational attainment, of jobless youth, seemingly with the im- plication that more schooling would re~ sult in a shrinking core of unemployed. In 1960 male dropouts, that is, non-high- school praduates, aged 20 to 24 account- ed for only 5 per cent of the male popu- lation aged 20 to 54, the key segment of Srarus Ober the nation’s work force. The young ci- vilian noa-graduates reported 9 per cent unemployed; the graduates reported 4 per cent unemployed. Equalization of the unemployment rate for young non-grad- uates with that for graduates would have little impact on the over-all rate of un- employment, for non-graduates arc small, rapidly shrinking group in cohorts entering the labor market. Specifically, the reduction in the over-all rate would approximate two-tenths of a percentage point in a rate on the order of 4 per cont. There may be another way in which © 'Yhe impact on the over-all rate is the product of the proportion in the category and the change in the categery-specific rate. Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reseved.DROPOUTS AND THE UNEMPLOYED the dropout phenomenon is linked to the employment situation, however, which has received rather less comment. Rees has called attention to the fact that “un- employment of young workers rises less than total unemployment in recessions.”* He suggests that the impact of unem- ployment on the living standards of young workers may be less insofar as they can rely more heavily on parental support, but cautions that “widespread unemployment of young people who are supported by their parents could never- theless lead to feclings of frustration or worthlessness. These could contribute to the development of antisocial attitudes, to crime, or even, in some circumstances, to the growth of totalitarian political movements.” I believe that we might add to the list of possible consequences of an unfavorable labor-market situation for young men, the prolongation of for- mal schooling, Facing a labor-market situation that offers few job openings, young men may delay their entry into the work force and continue their school- ing. Such a mechanism would be consist- ent with the observed fact of lesser in- creases in unemployment among youth in time of recession. After a review of the record of change in educational] attainment since the turn of the century, I shall present evidence that seems to link changes in attainment to changes in the employment situation. Subsequently, E shall examine changes in school attendance among teen-agers dur- ing the postwar years in relation to changes in the employment situation. Albert Rees, “The Measurersent of Unemploy- ment,” in Studies in Unemployment, prepared for the Special Committee on Unemployment Problems, US. Senate (Washington: Government Printing Of- fice, 1960), p. 28. 7 0p. cit., p. 28. Copyright © 2001. 123 EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT YOUTH OF 1902-56 The record of changes in educational attainment during the twenticth century can be reconstructed from 1960 census data on the age and cducational attain- ment of native males. To follow the terminology of Ryder, date of birth is “determinable at birth and fixed for life.’ Date of birth, which determines birth-cohort membership, “is usually represented by age, which is, of course, an invariant function of time and in this sense a fixed variable.”* Educational at- tainment is a changeable characteristic of the class which “endure[s] for extended periods of time, and [is] frequently per- manent within or beyond particular age limits. Thus educational attainment is by and large established during prematu- tity.”! By examining the reports of males aged 70 to 74 in 1960 on the number of years of school they have completed, we can infer the educational attainment of the cohort of boys who reached age 16 in the years 1902-6. Reports of the sur- vivors can be distorted by misstatements of attainment, and, of course, the sur- vivors can be selected on attainment leading to an upward bias in our estimate of the schooling received by youth at the turn of the century. Misstatements of age can lead to incorrect placement among cohorts. Nonetheless, this recon- structed record is far fuller than reports of 1902-6 on the schooling of youth. For convenience, birth cokorts are identified here in terms of the date at which members reached age 16, on the presumption that events occurring during the teens form the context in which deci- 4N.B. Ryder, “Notes on the Concept of a Popu- lation,” American Journal of Sociology, LXIX. (March, 1964), 451. ° Thid., p. 452, » Ibid. All Rights Reseved.