EXPLAINING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EMPLOYMENT AND JUVENILE DELINQUENCY* (original) (raw)
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Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 2008
On the basis of prior research findings that employed youth, and especially intensively employed youth, have higher rates of delinquent behavior and lower academic achievement, scholars have called for limits on the maximum number of hours per week that teenagers are allowed to work. We use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to assess the claim that employment and work hours are causally related to adolescent problem behavior. We utilize a change model with age-graded child labor laws governing the number of hours per week allowed during the school year as instrumental variables. We find that these work laws lead to additional number of hours worked by youth, which then lead to increased high school dropout but decreased delinquency. Although counterintuitive, this result is consistent with existing evidence about the effect of employment on crime for adults and the impact of dropout on youth crime. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2004 annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology (Nashville, TN).
Assessing the Effect of Adolescent Employment on Involvement in Criminal Activity
Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 2004
This article considers the problem of estimating the effect of a binary independent variable (employment) on a binary outcome variable (involvement in criminal activity) for a nationally representative sample of adolescents (ages 15-18). The authors’ bivariate analysis confirms a common finding from the literature, that adolescent employment is associated with increased risk of involvement in criminal activity. They then turn to the problem of assessing whether this association is sensitive to plausible assumptions about the impact of other variables (both observed and unobserved) on both employment and crime. This assessment reveals that both the sign and magnitude of the maximum likelihood estimate of the employment effect are quite sensitive to these assumptions. Based on this evidence, they conclude that future efforts to understand the adolescent work-crime relationship will benefit from resolving the ambiguities identified by their analysis.
Social Problems, 1999
Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) were used to identify the long-term effects of youth delinquency on education and employment. The study utilized data on 1,452 males and 1,397 females who were initially interviewed for the NLSY in 1979 and data collected on the same sample in 1990-1992. The 1990-1992 data set contained information on 1,145 males and 1,112 females from the 1979 data set. Various regression models were used to investigate whether the following specific forms of delinquency manifested by the respondents at age 14-17 years'affected the respondents' education and employment outcomes at age 25-30: skipping school; drug use; violent behavior; engaging in property crime; and contact with the criminal justice system. All five forms of delinquency had consistently significant and negative impacts on educational attainment among males and females, net of status attainment variables. Delinquency had a fairly consistent impact on male occupational outcomes but a weaker effect on female occupational outcomes. Delinquency was concluded to have autonomous and negative effects on later life chances. The findings were discussed in relation to links between status attainment models and theories of crime and delinquency. (The bibliography lists 48 references. Correlations between all 20 variables are appended.) (MN) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the ori inal document.
Criminology, 2007
A large body of research has consistently found that intensive employment during the school year is associated with heightened antisocial behavior. These findings have been influential in prompting policy recommendations to establish stricter limits on the number of hours that students can work during the school year. We reexamine the linkage between first-time work at age 16 during the school year and problem behaviors. Our analysis uses group-based trajectory modeling to stratify youths based on their developmental history of crime and substance abuse. This stratification serves to control for preexisting differences between workers and nonworkers and permits us to examine whether the effect of work on problem behaviors depends on the developmental history of those behaviors. Contrary to most prior research we find no overall effect of working on either criminal behavior or substance abuse. However, we do find some indication that work may have a salutary effect on these behaviors for some individuals who had followed trajectories of heightened criminal activity or substance abuse prior to their working for the first time.
An analysis of youth crime and employment patterns
Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 1986
This paper investigates the relationships between the employment and the crime decisions of youths. We assume that youths maximize expected utility and we allow divergence between ex ante and expost time allocations to legal and illegal activities. This gap motivates the exclusion restrictions which allow us to explore feedbacks between criminality and employability. Moreover, by using a panel of individual-level data, we are able to investigate the impact of historical crime and labor-market activities on the current delinquency and employability of juveniles. The measures of the endogeneous variables of our model are dichotomous. Furthermore, our sample is choice-based. Maximum-likelihood procedures which deal with these complications are used in our empirical investigations.
Crime & Delinquency, 2006
Research consistently demonstrates a positive correlation between hours of employment and problem behavior for adolescents. In response, the National Research Council (1998) proposed limits on youth work involvement, and its recommendation forms the basis for proposed legislation to amend federal child labor provisions. An unanticipated consequence may be to increase the amount of time that youths spend in the informal labor market because child labor laws only govern youth employment in the formal labor market. In this article, the authors attempt to address this policy implication and fill a gap in the extant literature by examining the impact of both formal and informal employment on delinquency and substance use. Because work patterns tend to be very different by gender and race or ethnicity, the authors estimate separate models for these subgroups. The authors use longitudinal data to deal with the possibility that there are unobserved differences between those that work and th...
The Impact of Juvenile Conviction on Human Capital and Labor Market Outcomes
Review, 2022
In this article, we document the empirical relationship among juvenile conviction, education, adult labor market occupational choices, employment, wages, and recidivism. Although several studies have shown that juvenile adjudication is associated with lower formal educational attainment and an increased likelihood of dropping out of high school, no existing study examines human capital accumulation through on-the-job (OTJ) training. Our data are from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) and the Occupational Information Network (O*NET). NLSY97 is a longitudinal survey that follows the lives of a sample of American youth born between 1980-84. It provides detailed information on each individual's convictions and incarcerations over time as well as the age and date of the first time the individual had an interaction with the correctional system. It also collects detailed information on each individual's history of employment, occupations, and wages. Finally, it has information on each This article documents the long-term relationship among juvenile conviction, occupational choices, employment, wages, and recidivism. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97), we document that youth convicted at or before age 17 have a lower full-time employment rate and lower wage growth rate even after 10 years in the labor market. Merging the NLSY97 with occupational characteristics data from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET), we show that youth with a juvenile conviction are less likely to be employed in occupations that have a high on-the-job training requirement and that these occupations have higher wages and wage growth. Accumulated occupation-specific work experience, general experience, and education are important for explaining the gaps in wage and recidivism between youth with and without a juvenile conviction. Our results highlight the important role of occupational choices as a human capital investment vehicle through which juvenile crimes have a longterm impact on wages and recidivism. (JEL K42, I24, J2, J3)
Delinquency, schooling, and work: time allocation decision of youth
Applied Economics, 2004
This paper examines the possible factors that affect the time allocation decision of youth between delinquency, schooling, and work. Based on a joint decision model, evidence from Montreal shows that influences from different social institutions such as family, church, school, peers, and the workplace are important determinants of how young people decide to spend their time on various activities. The findings provided here take into account the joint decision nature of the problem and therefore provide more precise estimates than those of the existing literature.
Linking Local Labor Market Opportunity To Violent Adolescent Delinquency
Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 2003
Most criminological theory is cast at either the macro or micro level. Developmental and integrated theories are an exception as they combine community characteristics such as neighborhood poverty with micro-level processes. What remains lacking, however, is attention to labor market conditions. The authors address this gap by testing a contextual model that links local labor market structure, adolescent attachments, and violent delinquency. Analyses draw from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Our findings suggest that low-wage, service sector employment opportunity directly increases the likelihood of violent delinquency. A small proportion of this effect is mediated by school achievement and attachment. The low-wage service sector effect uncovered remains when important micro-level processes including prior violence are controlled. The authors conclude by discussing the persistent low-wage service sector effect, the intervening processes we do uncover, and implications for future theoretical development and research on local labor markets.