Whatever Happened to Yesterday's Rebels? Longitudinal Effects of Youth Delinquency on Education and Employment. NALL Working Paper.

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)