Modeling the Economic Effects of Increased Drop-out Rates from High School

With Covid, high-school students are having difficulty staying in school. We present a dynamic model of the effects of increased drop-out rates. The model accounts for labor productivity, crime costs and high-school savings. We simulate a 25 per cent increase in drop-out rates occurring in the two years starting September 2019, with a gradual return to pre-Covid rates in 2025. Our results show a loss of 597,000 high-school graduations from cohorts entering high-school in 2016-2024. The present-value cost is between $42 and $137 billion, depending on discount rates. These results support investment in high-school retention policies through the Covid crisis.