Racial Inequality in High School Dropout Rates of Men Ages Twenty to Thirty Four, 1980 to 2008

This chart shows that excluding the incarcerated population from surveys leads to a distorted picture of racial inequality in educational outcomes. This figure shows that when inmates are included the racial gap in high school completion among men has hovered close to its current level of 11 percentage points for most of the past twenty years.

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).