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The Effects of the Great Recession on Educational Attainment: Evidence from a Large Urban High School District

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Abstract

Economic crises are a recurrent phenomenon in American society, yet there is little knowledge of the impacts on educational opportunity. Using data from a large high school district as a case study, this research explores the impact of the Great Recession (2007–2009) on high school senior graduation rates in an area at the epicenter of the Recession. A logistic regression model with cluster robust standard errors is developed to estimate the recession’s impact on student subgroups’ graduation rates between the periods 2004–2013 for maximum variation. Results show that students who are historically “at-risk” experienced significant declines in graduation rates at the beginning of the recession in 2008. The decline is followed by a steep increase in graduation rates beginning in 2009, largely driven by increases for the most disadvantaged groups. These results suggest that the recession created a counter-cyclical demand for education.

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Notes

  1. In 2009, California ranked second among states with the largest loss of home value (Bardhan and Walker 2009).

  2. A proxy for low-income students (Orfield and Lee 2005).

  3. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the United States had been in a recession from December 2007 to June 2009.

  4. See Swanson (2003) and Warren and Halpern-Manners (2009) for informative discussions of the variety methods for estimating high school graduation rates.

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    Kfir Mordechay

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Mordechay, K. The Effects of the Great Recession on Educational Attainment: Evidence from a Large Urban High School District. Urban Rev 49, 47–71 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-016-0381-x

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