The "forgotten half" in the post-schooling labor market: Does high school work experience matter?

Abstract

Due, in part, to concern about the difficulty of the school-to-work transition for students graduating from or dropping out of high school, economists have studied the relationship between high school work experience and post-high school employment and wages. These studies have demonstrated the existence of a positive relationship between work in high school, and wages and the probability and/or duration of employment after high school. An important policy implication of this research is that, in order to ease the difficulty of the school-to-work transition, opportunities for students to combine schooling and work should be expanded. However, these studies do not adequately investigate the extent to which the relationship between high school work experience and post-high school employment and wages is causal, and the extent to which it arises from the possibility that students who work more during this period are more motivated or able than those who work less. This study addresses this question primarily through the employment of two-stage least squares estimation in order to statistically control for unobservable differences among individuals. The analysis provides no evidence of a significant positive relationship between high school work experience and post-schooling wages. Thus, it can be concluded that individuals who work more during high school are not more productive than those who work less. In addition, the results of the two-stage least squares analysis of post-schooling employment indicate that a significant portion of the relationship between high school work experience and post-high school employment is causal. Furthermore, the analysis demonstrates that the effects of high school hours persist for as many as eight years after the termination of formal schooling.