Adjusted High School Dropout Rates for Men Ages Twenty to Thirty-Four, 1980 to 2008

This chart shows high school dropout rates using the Current Population Survey, and how they change when adjusted to include information about the prison and jail population. The figure shows that the effect of excluding inmates on estimates of graduation rates has grown over time. By 2008, conventional data sources that exclude the incarcerated population underestimated the dropout rate among black men by 40 percent.

Source: Author's calculations using data from the March Current Population Survey (U.S. Census Bureau, various years) and data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics Surveys of Inmates (U.S. Dept. of Justice, BJS, various years).