تاثیر اشتغال نوجوانان بر روی ترک تحصیل از دبیرستان: تفاوت های مشخصات فردی و بازار کار

In this paper we address five questions. First, how do individual- and labor-market-level factors influence high school students’ paid employment behaviors? Second, to what extent is student employment associated with high school dropout net of these factors? Third, does the association between student employment and dropout vary by students’ race/ethnicity and other socio-demographic characteristics? Fourth, to what extent do local labor-market opportunities influence high school dropout? Fifth, does the association between student employment and high school dropout vary by local labor-market circumstances? Using data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 and the 1990 US Census, we find that several individual- and labor-market-level factors influence students’ employment behaviors; that adolescent employment and dropout are strongly associated, even after adjusting for individual- and labor-market-level factors; that this association does not vary by individual-level attributes; and that this association does not vary across labor markets. We end by describing two perspectives on the mechanisms linking adolescent employment and dropout.

Most US students complete high school, but the consequences for those who do not are severe. Data from the 2001 March Current Population Survey show that workers between the ages of 25 and 34 without a high school diploma earn about two-thirds as much as their peers who do have a diploma. About 30% of 25–34-year-olds without high school diplomas had personal incomes below the poverty threshold in 2001; this figure was only about 12% among 25–34 year olds who had diplomas but who had not gone on for any further schooling. High school students who work many hours per week at paid jobs during the school year are considerably more likely to drop out of high school than their peers who do not work or who work less intensively. Although working a few hours per week either has no effect or decreases the odds of dropping out, intensive work involvement—more than 15 or 20 h per week—detracts from the chances of graduating ( D’Amico, 1984; Marsh, 1991; Warren et al., 2000). McNeal (1997) suggests that the effects of employment status on the odds of dropping out vary by gender and by the types of jobs that students hold, but there is little evidence regarding differences in the effects of employment intensity by sex or any other student characteristics. In this paper we ask whether the effects of employment status and intensity on high school dropout vary by individual and/or local labor-market characteristics. How should we interpret the association between adolescent employment and high school dropout? From one perspective, we might conclude that intensive employment has the effect of pulling students out of high school. This conclusion is premised on the assumption that these students would not have dropped out had they not been involved (or had they been less intensively involved) in the paid labor market. From another perspective, we might conclude that some students perceive paid employment to be more worthwhile or rewarding—in the short and/or long run—than obtaining a high school diploma, and that intensive employment during high school is frequently a precursor to full-time employment instead of high school. From the latter point of view, paid employment does not necessarily pull students out of high school. Intensive employment is simply an alternative activity, pursued by those who see themselves as unlikely to graduate or go on to college or who perceive that their future labor-market position might be optimized through this course of action. Evaluating the merits of these different—if not necessarily competing—perspectives is more than an academic issue. If intensive employment is pulling students out of high school, we might reasonably recommend that labor laws pertaining to minors be amended and/or better enforced. However, if some students are turning to intensive employment as an activity that is more satisfying or enjoyable than school and that offers greater immediate rewards and/or perceived prospects for future success, our recommendations for policy action will need to be different. In that case our focus might need to turn to engaging these students in school, to making school relevant or attractive to them, or to convincing them of the relative long-term benefits of high school graduation. Although we will not directly adjudicate between these perspectives on the nature of the association between adolescent employment and dropout, we do hope to provide some necessary empirical evidence about the relationships between high school students’ employment behaviors, social and demographic characteristics, local labor-market opportunities, and high school dropout. First, we ask how individual-level (socioeconomic, demographic, and academic) factors and labor-market characteristics influence students’ employment behaviors. Because many of the factors that influence students’ employment behaviors also influence high school dropout, these selection issues are of central importance. Second, we estimate the independent effects of adolescent employment on high school dropout, net of these confounding factors. Third, we consider how such effects vary by race/ethnicity, sex, socioeconomic status, and academic plans and experiences. We pay special attention to race/ethnic differences in these effects, since there are pronounced race/ethnic differences in adolescent employment behaviors and local labor-market opportunities. Fourth, we ask whether local labor-market circumstances influence high school dropout. If employment opportunities influence the decision to leave school before graduation, we should observe that—all else constant—dropout rates vary by the quantity and nature of local economic opportunities for young people. Finally, we ask whether the effects of students’ employment behaviors on their chances of dropping out of high school vary by local labor-market circumstances. As we describe below, there are good reasons to suppose that the impact of adolescent employment on dropout varies by both individual-level and labor-market-level factors. This investigation fits into two areas of current educational research. First, it contributes to our understanding of high school dropout and its socioeconomic correlates. We are concerned with both the individual-level socioeconomic and academic factors that influence dropout decisions and the macro-level labor-market factors that might pull students from high school. Second, it adds to research into how students’ work activities affect academic success. Although employment among high school students has previously been linked to subsequent dropout (D’Amico, 1984; Marsh, 1991; McNeal, 1997; Warren and Cataldi, 2002), our work extends prior research in three important respects. First, by considering labor-market characteristics, we add a macro perspective on the individual-level relationship between employment behaviors and school completion. Second, we focus on the extent to which the well-documented association between employment and dropout varies across groups of students and across labor-market contexts. Third, our work necessarily focuses more squarely on the role of race/ethnicity in the relationship between employment and dropout, since employment behaviors and labor-market characteristics vary substantially by race/ethnicity.