The Economic Disadvantages of Not Going to High School

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High school dropout ratio is a mess it has a lot going on there that needs to be disentangled when you're comparing wage rates of of higher levels of education to high school dropouts. Early childhood education K-12 education exactly to prepare the to prepare young people for a range of careers in a rapidly changing economy. Drug treatment is a hugely important piece I think of the solution so and and we know a lot more now than we did 35 years ago about the physiological bases of of drug addiction and other things. You can also comment on today's podcast where you can also find links and readings related to today's conversation.

Becky Pettit of the University of Washington and author of Invisible Men talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the growth of the prison population in the United States in recent decades. Pettit describes the magnitude of the increase particularly among demographic groups. She then discusses the implications of this increase for interpreting social statistics. Because the prison population isn't included in the main government surveys used by social scientists, data drawn from those surveys can be misleading as to what is actually happening among demographic groups, particularly the African-American population.