The Relationship Between State-Level Poverty and High School Attainment

Abstract

The study employs hierarchical binomial models to test the effect of poverty and the concentration of poverty within a state and a variety of other factors on the attainment of seventeen-year-old census respondents across six samples from 1960 through 2010. The state level predictors remain important in most models. These measures, taken as a whole, account for substantial variability between the states in all but one sample year. 1960 is the exception. The state level poverty variable was found to produce a negative effect of statistical significance in three of the six samples. Of the control variables, the black population in a state has a negative effect in two samples and the Asian population in a state produces a positive effect in four of the six samples. Family poverty status predicts lower attainment in all six samples. The effect yields the most powerful adjusted odds coefficient in 2010 and the weakest in 1980. One other variable, family size, has a negative effect on the attainment outcomes in each studied sample. Paternal cultural capital predictors and female gender have positive effects in all six samples. The importance of regional differences, historical trends, and emerging policy considerations are also explored.