How does the crisis affect me?

If the nearly 1.3 million students who dropped out of high school in 2009 had instead graduated, the nation could have saved

• almost $335 billion in lost wages, taxes, and productivity over their lifetimes;
• $17 billion in health care costs over the lifetimes of each class; and
• $1.4 billion a year in community college remediation costs and lost earnings.

To better understand the various economic benefits that a particular community could expect if it were to reduce its number of high school dropouts, the Alliance, with the generous support of State Farm®, analyzed the local economies of the nation’s fifty largest cities and their surrounding areas. In these areas combined, sixty thousand students dropped out from the Class of 2008. If 50 percent of those dropouts from that single high school class had graduated, there would be tremendous economic benefits:

• These new graduates would likely be earning as much as $4.1 billion in combined earnings in the average year compared to their likely earnings without a diploma.
• These new graduates’ additional spending and investment would likely be enough to support 30,000 new jobs and increase the gross regional products of these areas by as much as $5.3 billion by the time these new graduates reach the midpoint of their careers.
• Sixty-five percent of these new graduates would likely pursue some type of postsecondary education.

To view the one-page documents of the economic benefits for each of the fifty cities/metro areas, click here.