Causes of early adulthood of Mexican and white non Hispanic students in high school in the United States

Alejandro Roman, El Colegio de México
Sagrario Garay, Facultad de Trabajo Social y Desarrollo Humano (UANL)

The aim of this paper is to analyze early adulthood through school dropout for a cohort of high school students comparing White non-Hispanic and Mexican 1st, 2nd, and 3rd generations (). The main causes of school drop out that we will analyze are parenthood and labor force entry. We will use data from the National Education Longitudinal Survey (NELS 88-92). Our main findings are: that an important percentage of Mexican and native high school students drop out because they had problems in school. The second reason for high school dropout, mainly for Mexicans, is parenthood, while for white non Hispanics it is labor force entry.