TY - JOUR AU - Heckman,James J. AU - Humphries,John Eric AU - Mader,Nicholas S. TI - The GED JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 16064 PY - 2010 Y2 - June 2010 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w16064 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w16064.pdf N1 - Author contact info: James J. Heckman Department of Economics The University of Chicago 1126 E. 59th Street Chicago, IL 60637 Tel: 773/702-0634 Fax: 773/702-8490 E-Mail: jjh@uchicago.edu John Eric Humphries Department of Economics The University of Chicago 1126 E. 59th Street Chicago IL 60637 E-Mail: johnerichumphries@gmail.com Nicholas S. Mader University of Chicago Department of Economics 1126 E. 59th Street Chicago IL 60637 E-Mail: nmader@uchicago.edu AB - The General Educational Development (GED) credential is issued on the basis of an eight hour subject-based test. The test claims to establish equivalence between dropouts and traditional high school graduates, opening the door to college and positions in the labor market. In 2008 alone, almost 500,000 dropouts passed the test, amounting to 12% of all high school credentials issued in that year. This chapter reviews the academic literature on the GED, which finds minimal value of the certificate in terms of labor market outcomes and that only a few individuals successfully use it as a path to obtain post-secondary credentials. Although the GED establishes cognitive equivalence on one measure of scholastic aptitude, recipients still face limited opportunity due to deficits in noncognitive skills such as persistence, motivation and reliability. The literature finds that the GED testing program distorts social statistics on high school completion rates, minority graduation gaps, and sources of wage growth. Recent work demonstrates that, through its availability and low cost, the GED also induces some students to drop out of school. The GED program is unique to the United States and Canada, but provides policy insight relevant to any nation's educational context. ER -