Abstract
Objectives
This study examines: (a) whether the association between juvenile delinquency and educational attainment differs by gender, and (b) which factors underlie such gender differences.
Methods
In order to account for the influence of unobservable family-background factors, this study applies sibling fixed-effects models on the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). As a sensitivity check, I explore whether observed gender differences are robust to different measurements of delinquency and the potential presence of sibling spillover effects.
Results
Nearly half of the association between juvenile delinquency and educational attainment is attributable to unobservable factors related to family background. This study finds that controlling for unobserved family-level heterogeneity substantially attenuates the association between juvenile delinquency and educational attainment among females, making it no longer statistically significant. Among males, sibling fixed-effects estimates suggest that a one-standard-deviation increase in delinquent involvement is associated with a reduction in 0.23 years of schooling and a 4.6 percentage point increase in the probability of high school dropout. Supplementary analyses show that male delinquents face major disadvantages in social relationships in school settings and display lower levels of educational aspirations as well as effort. No such patterns are found among female delinquents.
Conclusions
This study finds a negative association between delinquency and educational attainment only for males but not for females. Results suggest that failure to account for unobserved family-level heterogeneity spuriously inflates the delinquency–education association to a larger extent among females than males.
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Notes
It is important to note that the missing data on family-level variables did not affect the study’s preferred specification, i.e., sibling fixed-effects models, since these models eliminate all characteristics shared by siblings.
For supplementary analyses, in order to retain all respondents used in the main analyses, I use Wave 1 outcomes instead or Wave 2 outcomes because 12th graders (in Wave 1) who graduated from high school by Wave 2 were not interviewed in Wave 2.
Major offenses were defined as delinquent activities that would usually be treated as felonies (Giordano et al. 1986; Clark and Shields 1997). The following 6 items were categorized as major delinquent behaviors in this study: (1) stealing something worth $50 or more, (2) burglarizing, (3) selling drugs, (4) threatening to use a weapon on someone, (5) pulling a knife or gun on someone, and (6) shooting or stabbing someone.
Both low- and high-frequency minor offenders have committed no major offenses. As expected, both low- and high frequency major offenders have also committed minor delinquent behaviors to varying degrees.
Fixed-effects model would not work as intended if there was a great deal of concordance between siblings (i.e., they did not differ in observed characteristics), but, consistent with prior research (Fletcher 2013; Kim 2016), there is evidence of sufficiently discordant families in the Add Health data. Table 12 in the Appendix demonstrates that less than 30% of the siblings in the sample have identical delinquency measures (Column 1) and approximately 20% of siblings were substantially discordant in terms of the delinquency scale (more than one standard deviation away from each other) (Column 2). Moreover, Column 3 suggests that a substantial amount of “unexplained” variation remains when family characteristics are controlled.
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Tables 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12.
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Kim, J. Gender Differences in the Educational Penalty of Delinquent Behavior: Evidence from an Analysis of Siblings. J Quant Criminol 37, 179–216 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-020-09450-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-020-09450-0