Volume 30, Number 3 (Summer) 1995
Altonji, Joseph G. 1995. "The Effects of High School Curriculum on Education and Labor Market Outcomes." Journal of Human Resources 30(3):409-438.
There is much public discussion but almost no evidence on the effects of high school curriculum on postsecondary education and on success in the labor market. I use the large variation in curriculum across the U.S. high schools to identify the effects on wages and educational attainment of specific courses of study. The main finding is that the return to additional courses in academic subjects is small. One cannot account for the value of a year of high school with estimates of the value of the courses taken by the typical student during the year.
The author is a researcher at the Canter for urban Affairs and Policy Research and a professor of economics at Northwestern University and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. This study was funded by the National Center on Education and Employment, Teachers College Columbia University under a grant from the U.S. Department of education, by the Spencer Foundation, and by the Center for urban Affairs and Policy Research at Northwestern University. The author thanks John Bishop, Lawrence Katz, Bruce Meyer, Aaron Pallas, three anonymous referees, and participants in seminars at Boston University, Cornell University, the University of Kentucky, Northwestern University, the Ohio State University, Princeton University, the University of Pittsburgh, Teachers College Columbia University, Texas A&M, and the Institute for research on Poverty for helpful comments. Avner Greif, Christian Stadlinger, and James Spletzer provided excellent research assistance. The author takes sole responsibility for the opinions expressed in the study and for any errors or omissions. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning in December 1995 through December 1998 from the author at Department of Economics, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208.
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