TY  - JOUR
AU  - Neal,Derek
TI  - The Effect of Catholic Secondary Schooling on Educational Attainment
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 5353
PY  - 1995
Y2  - November 1995
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5353
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5353.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Derek Neal
Department of Economics
University of Chicago
1126 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
Tel: 773/702-8166
Fax: 773-702-8490
E-Mail: d-neal@uchicago.edu
AB  - Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this paper provides a detailed analysis of the effect of Catholic secondary schooling on high-school graduation rates and also examines Catholic schooling's effect on college graduation rates and future wages.  The paper uses data from the National Catholic Educational Association and the Survey of Churches and Church Membership to construct measures of access to Catholic secondary schooling for each county in the United States.  These measures of access provide potential instruments for Catholic school attendance. The results indicate that Catholic secondary schools are geographically concentrated in urban areas and that Catholic schooling greatly increases educational attainment among urban minorities.  The gains from Catholic schooling are modest for urban whites and negligible for suburban whites.  Related analyses suggest that urban minorities benefit greatly from access to Catholic schooling primarily because the public schools available to them are quite poor.
ER  -