The percentage of Hispanic young adults who were out of school without a high school credential has remained higher than that of blacks and whites in every year throughout this 28-year period. During these years, when immigration patterns contributed to substantial changes in the size and composition of the Hispanic population, the status dropout rates for Hispanic young adults did not decline. Over most of the 28-year period, about 3 of every 10 of the 16- through 24-year-old Hispanics in the United States were reported as out of school and lacking a high school credential (table 3)¹⁵.

Due to relatively small sample sizes, reliable estimates of the status dropout rate for Asian/Pacific Islanders could not be calculated before 1998, so they are not shown separately in the trend lines (figure 2). However, in 1999, Asians/Pacific Islanders, who represented 4.4 percent of the total 16- through 24-year-old population, had a status dropout rate of 4.3 percent, the lowest rate among all racial/ethnic groups (table 3). In comparison, 7.3 percent of white young adults ages 16 through 24 were out of school and without a high school credential in 1999. Even though white young adults were less likely to be status dropouts in 1999 than their black and Hispanic peers, whites constituted the largest group of status dropouts, accounting for 1.6 million of the 3.8 million dropouts (42.7 percent).

While Hispanics represented the same proportion of the young adult population as did blacks (14.8 and 14.5 percent, respectively), Hispanics were disproportionally represented among status dropouts in 1999 (37.7 percent of all dropouts). A total of 1.4 million Hispanics were dropouts in 1999, representing 28.6 percent of all Hispanic young adults in this age group. In comparison, about 600,000 black young adults, or 12.6 percent of the total black population of 16- through 24-year-olds, were dropouts in the corresponding period.