of youth will reach US, with most dropping out at earlier stages. In El Salvador, the dropout profile of the most recent cohorts is in between these two descriptions.

Within each country, large inequalities in dropout rates and therefore educational attainment outcomes are evident. Poverty, rurality, and indigenous group membership are the strongest correlates of dropout, likely reflecting several underlying factors that affect both the marginal benefits and costs of staying in school. On the benefits side, these factors influence human capital built early in life, the quality of schooling services available, and labor market opportunities. They also affect the direct and opportunity costs of persisting, including the actual accessibility of schools.

The consequences of dropout are felt at the individual and aggregate levels. As described in Section 2, youth with less education have worse labor market outcomes, in terms of employment, informality, and wages. Evidence from around the world also finds that educational attainment is correlated with many other life outcomes, including health and the well-being of the next generation. In aggregate, workforces that lack the skills demanded in the labor market constrain growth at all stages of development, as has been pointed out in the Systematic Country Diagnostics of Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Panama (World Bank 2014, 2015a, and 2015b). Youth lacking skills and labor market opportunities are also likely to be more vulnerable to becoming involved with crime or getting pregnant early.

Substantial progress has been made in understanding the drivers of dropout and identifying interventions to reduce it. A range of factors influence the process that leads to eventual dropout, and most of these factors can be affected by policy, as discussed in Section 3. Despite recent growth in the knowledge base of what works to reduce dropout, the challenge of detailed prioritization remains. As described in Section 4, the cost-effectiveness of different interventions, as well as potential interactions across interventions, are not well-understood. In addition, the design details of individual interventions may matter a great deal for impacts. Despite these limitations, several conclusions can be drawn for Central America.

Across all six countries, there are common priority policy areas which would contribute to reducing dropout, with different specifics depending on each country’s context and dropout challenge. To prevent dropout from occurring in the long-term, building human capital from early childhood onwards is critical, and requires coordination across sectors to address health, nutrition, and parenting in the years before children enter the education system. Specific approaches will vary by country, but could include targeting the most disadvantaged communities where early life outcomes are known to be weakest. Within school systems, both _de jure_ and _de facto_ access are in need of attention. In Nicaragua, making LS compulsory and expanding supply accordingly are necessary first steps, while in Honduras, El Salvador, and possibly Guatemala, expanding supply is needed to fulfill existing compulsory schooling laws. In Panama and Costa Rica, where US participation rates are highest, the focus may need to be more on practices within schools, in terms of increasing support for poorly performing students and changing school cultures to make universal completion the expectation.

The quality of education provided, on average and in particular to lower socioeconomic groups, is also a priority area which would contribute to preventing dropout. While learning outcomes at the primary level in Costa Rica are relatively strong on average, large differences across 28