ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the effect of Catholic school attendance on high school dropout rates and educational attainment. It discusses background issues and explains an appendix using a different data set to examine the effect of parochial schooling on educational attainment. Several studies suggest that Catholic schools have a positive effect on academic achievement. Catholic schools dominate the private school sector. If self-selection is ignored, estimates of the effect of Catholic schools on educational attainment can be biased because relevant variables are omitted. J. S. Coleman and T. Hoffer argue that there is a positive Catholic effect on academic achievement because the Catholic community provides social capital which contributes to educational attainment. Two-Stage Least Squares is used to estimate educational attainment and bivariate probit is used to estimate the dropout rate. The “uncorrected” estimate of educational attainment indicates that Catholic schooling has a significant positive effect.
