education
High school diploma or higher
Why this matters
A high school diploma is a basic building block of opportunity. This measure tracks the share of adults age 25 and older who have finished high school or earned an equivalent credential like a GED. It is a foundation for nearly all further education and most steady jobs.
Finishing high school is strongly linked to better health. People with a diploma tend to live longer, report better health, and have lower rates of conditions like diabetes, much of it through the higher earnings and more stable lives a diploma helps make possible.
When a large share of adults lack this credential, it can signal gaps in schools, economic strain, or barriers that pushed people out of education.
About the Charlotte region
This explorer covers the 14-county, two-state Charlotte region (11 North Carolina and 3 South Carolina counties). Many of these indicators connect to a defining regional story: a landmark Harvard study ranked Charlotte last, 50th of the 50 largest U.S. metros for economic mobility (a child raised in the poorest fifth had about a 4.4% chance of reaching the top fifth), a finding that launched the region's Leading on Opportunity agenda. Updated 2024 data show Charlotte has since climbed to 38th.
Opportunity here is also unevenly mapped. An affluent “wedge” fanning southeast from uptown holds a large majority of the city's wealth on under a quarter of its land, while a ”crescent” to the north, west, and east carries higher poverty, a legacy of redlining, exclusionary zoning, and highway routing that recurs across the race, income, health, tree-canopy, and school maps in this tool. No single indicator is good or bad on its own; together they describe how the region sorted opportunity.
Companion resources: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer · UNC Charlotte Urban Institute · Opportunity Atlas · Methods & sources
Learn more
- County Health Rankings — High School Completion countyhealthrankings.org
How high school completion connects to health, with county-level estimates.
- U.S. Census Bureau — Educational Attainment census.gov
Source for the share of adults who have completed high school, by place.
About the data
Calculated from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates (2014–2024), at the Census-tract level, with margins of error. ACS 5-year vintages overlap year to year, so the series is a rolling estimate; compare only non-overlapping periods.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates.