Labor Market Returns to the GED Using Regression Discontinuity Analysis

By Christopher Jepsen, Peter R. Mueser, Kenneth R. Troske. Journal of Political Economy, 2016

70 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We evaluate returns to General Educational Development (GED) certification for high school dropouts using state administrative data. We apply a fuzzy regression discontinuity method to account for test takers retaking the test. For women we find that GED certification has no statistically significant effect on either employment or earnings. For men we find a significant increase in earnings in the second year after taking the test but no impact in subsequent years. GED certification increases postsecondary school enrollment by 4–8 percentage points. Our results differ from regression discontinuity approaches that fail to account for test retaking.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Education, Safety Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/129b02b3e3ad13653f23746942e5cdcb71925d51

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

1. Joshua Goodman
2. Jonathan Smith
3. Michael Hurwitz

In Education

1. Joshua Goodman
2. Jonathan Smith
3. Michael Hurwitz
4. J. Kirksey
5. Michael A. Gottfried

In Safety Research

1. Joshua Goodman
2. Jonathan Smith
3. Michael Hurwitz

Citations in the corpus

• Access to 4-Year Public Colleges and Degree Completion (2017, methodology): “This is similar to the approach used by Jepsen et al. (2016), who evaluate the labor market return to earning a GED.”