Gen Z’s straight‑A boom is quietly shrinking their paychecks

Straight‑A report cards have never been more common for America’s teens—but the payoff is not what parents think. A new National Bureau of Economic Research study finds that when teachers hand out “easy A” grades, their students are more likely to skip class, score worse on future tests, and earn less money years later. For a typical high school class, the researchers estimate grade inflation can shave about $213,000 off the group’s future earnings, or roughly $150 a year for each letter grade quietly nudged up.

The findings arrive as President Donald Trump pushes a crackdown on grade inflation on college campuses, tying federal funding to whether universities hold the line on grading. Gen Z is already the first generation to score lower than their parents on some measures of cognitive performance, as reading habits erode and schools lean harder on grades instead of learning.

The study, entitled “Easy A’s, Less Pay: The Long-Term Effects of Grade Inflation,” found that for each individual student, this dynamic chalks up to a decrease in yearly earnings of about $150 for every grade bumped up to a B+ from a B, for example.

“Average grade inflation hurts,” Nolan Pope, one of the study’s researchers and a labor economist at University of Maryland, told Fortune. “They are less likely to learn if it’s very easy to get an A. They spend less time and effort.”

The debate around grade ...