Over the last 20 years, the number of full-time workers who are college graduates has risen from about 20 percent to almost 30 percent. Many unskilled male workers have become so discouraged that they have dropped out of the labor force, increasing the fraction of nonworking male high-school dropouts from about 25 percent in 1975 to 35 percent in 1995. Given the huge earnings increase associated with college attendance, it is no surprise that college enrollments are rising. About 65 percent of whites in this country now acquire some college education. But black attendance rates are about 10 percentage points lower.
Hispanic students are about four times as likely to drop out of high school as are whites.
James Heckman of the University of Chicago argues that the income of parents at the time their children leave high school has less impact on the decision to attend college than do long-term factors, such as the economic and social circumstances of the family when the child was young. The time to intervene, Heckman argues, is early in a child's life. Millions of adults have dropped out of the labor force because they cannot afford to replace their government-paid health insurance with a private policy. Nor can they afford day care for their young children. The percentage of the population without health insurance has risen to about 16 percent and is nudging higher.