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. 2008 Dec;24(4):337-362.
doi: 10.1007/s10940-008-9055-5.

Using State Child Labor Laws to Identify the Causal Effect of Youth Employment on Deviant Behavior and Academic Achievement

Robert Apel  1 , Shawn D Bushway, Raymond Paternoster, Robert Brame, Gary Sweeten
Affiliations

Using State Child Labor Laws to Identify the Causal Effect of Youth Employment on Deviant Behavior and Academic Achievement

Robert Apel et al. J Quant Criminol. 2008 Dec.

Abstract

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.

Keywords: Crime and deviance; Instrumental variables; Longitudinal data; School performance; Youth employment.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Monthly employment probabilities from age 14 to age 19. Note: N = 8,984. Estimates are weighted to provide generalizability to the population of all youths who were 12–16 years of age at yearend 1996. Source: National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, rounds 1–7
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Age distribution of first formal job. Note: N = 7,552. Estimates are weighted to provide generalizability to the population of all youths who were 12–16 years of age at yearend 1996. Source: National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, rounds 1–7
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Mean within-individual change in work intensity at the 15-to-16 transition by change in weekly hours restrictions under state child labor laws. Note: Estimates are unweighted. This figure is limited to youth who were not employed while age 15. Open diamonds represent the aggregate of responding youth from individual states. The figure is limited to states with at least 10 responding youth
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