The Value of High School Graduation in the United States: Per-Person Shadow Price Estimates for Use in Cost–Benefit Analysis

Aidan Vining and David Weimer

Administrative Sciences, 2019, vol. 9, issue 4, 1-15

Abstract: One way for jurisdictions with limited analytic resources to increase their capability for doing cost–benefit analysis (CBA) is to use existing shadow prices, or “plug-ins”, for important social impacts. This article contributes to the further development of one important shadow price: the value of an additional high school graduation in the United States. Specifically, how valuable to a student, government, and the rest of society in aggregate is a high school graduation? The analysis builds on the method developed by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy and presents numerical updates and extensions to their analysis. For the U.S., the estimated net present value (the social value) using a 3 percent real discount rate of this shadow price is approximately $300,000 per each additional graduate. In appropriate circumstances, this value can be “plugged-in” to CBAs of policies that either directly or indirectly seeks to increase the number of students who graduate from high school.

Keywords: cost–benefit analysis; high-school graduation; shadow price; social value of education; plug-in value (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L M M0 M1 M10 M11 M12 M14 M15 M16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3387/9/4/81/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3387/9/4/81/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jadmsc:v:9:y:2019:i:4:p:81-:d:277526

Access Statistics for this article

Administrative Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Nancy Ma

More articles in Administrative Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().