Natives, the Foreign-Born and High School Equivalents: New Evidence on the Returns to the GED

Melissa A. Clark and David Jaeger
Additional contact information
Melissa A. Clark: affiliation not available

No 477, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In this paper we explore the labor market returns to the General Education Development exam, or GED. Using new data from the Current Population Survey, we examine how the return to the GED varies between U.S. natives and the foreign-born. We find that foreign-born men who hold a GED but received all of their formal schooling outside of the U.S. earn significantly more than either foreign-schooled dropouts or individuals with a foreign high school diploma. For foreign-born men with some U.S. schooling, earning a GED brings higher wages than a traditional U.S. high school diploma, although this difference is not statistically significantly different from zero. These patterns stand in contrast to those for U.S. natives, among whom GED recipients earn less than high school graduates but significantly more than dropouts. The effects for natives appear to become larger over the life cycle and do not seem to be due to cohort effects. While it is difficult to attach a purely causal interpretation to our findings, they do indicate that the GED may be more valuable in the labor market than some previous research suggests.

Keywords: sheepskin effects; immigration; GED (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I2 J31 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2002-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Published - published in: Journal of Population Economics, 2006, 19 (4), 769-793

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp477.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Natives, the foreign-born and high school equivalents: new evidence on the returns to the GED (2006)
Working Paper: Natives, the Foreign-Born and High School Equivalents: New Evidence on the Returns to the GED (2002)
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:iza:izadps:dp477

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().