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In the previous chapter, we have shown that in general, adolescent risk taking is associated with diminished adult outcomes. In particular, the earlier one initiates into a risky behavior, the worse the outcomes will be. However, not all youths engaging in risky behaviors fare poorly. Two youths both choosing to initiate early into a risky behavior may have different outcomes as adults. The divergent pathways may be the result of many factors. To understand why these outcomes may differ requires examining the pathways followed from adolescence to adulthood. Among the factors that may influence these pathways is the environment within the family. We have seen relationships between adolescent family structure and parents' education and adult outcomes. Yet these likely proxy for additional processes occurring within the family.
This chapter seeks to lay the groundwork for future research into the transition from adolescence to adulthood, focusing on one point along the path. We have not modeled the choice of when to engage in a risky behavior; instead we begin at a fork in the path where the adolescent has made that choice. Those choosing early initiation are taking themselves down a path with an increased likelihood of bad outcomes. Given that they have chosen this fork in the path, what factors can help prevent them from facing bad outcomes? What factors will return them to the "right" path?
To address this question, we limit our sample to "early initiators" within the various adolescent risky behaviors, i.e. those who have chosen the "bad" fork in the path. We estimate a set of regressions similar to those in Chapter V and continue our focus on family structure and parents' education. For this analysis, we address whether adolescent family structure and parents' education can help early initiators avoid bad outcomes.(20) Specifically, we examine the relationship between adolescent family structure and parents' education and long-term adult outcomes for early initiators.(21)
It is possible that the impact of family structure and parents' education is the same for early initiators and late initiators, or the effect could be in the same direction but of a higher or lower magnitude. While the relative importance of these variables between early and late initiators would be interesting, we do not compare them here. We want to know exclusively about early initiators. In particular, it is quite possible that family structure and parents' education have no impact on early initiators. As noted above, if they didn't prevent the early initiation, maybe they can't help after the fact. That is the question we address in this chapter, whether family structure and parents' education have an impact on the adult outcomes of adolescents who choose to initiate early into one or more risky behaviors.
In this analysis, we estimate a unique regression for each behavior-outcome pair. For example, there is a regression for the outcome "ever been in poverty between ages 25-29" for early initiators into alcohol use, another for early initiators into marijuana use, yet another for early sex initiators, and so on. The definition of an early initiator varies by both the behavior and the outcome being studied and is determined empirically from the regressions in Chapter V. For each behavior-outcome pair, we define early initiators by starting with the earliest age group (11-15) and then combining with any age groups for which there was no significant difference in the association of the behavior and the outcome. The combined group is then referred to in this context as "early initiators." The age groups that are not included are deleted from the analysis.(22) This means that the definition of "early initiator" will be different for each behavior-outcome pair. For example, early initiators into alcohol use are defined as ages 11-17 when examining the outcome of adult alcohol abuse or dependency, but are ages 11-19 when examining adult drug usage.
No significant difference across the four age groups implies that early initiation into the behavior is not different than late initiation with regard to that particular outcome. Since we are concentrating on the "bad" paths chosen by early initiators, these behavior-outcome pairs were dropped from the analysis. For example, the age of alcohol initiation was not associated with any economic outcomes except ever being on welfare. Therefore, for the other five economic outcomes, we do not examine further the relationship between alcohol initiation and those outcomes.
Although delinquency is not measured by age of initiation, but rather by the number of delinquent or criminal acts in 1980, we refer for convenience to those who engaged in greater numbers of such acts as "early initiators." In this case, we begin with those who committed nine or more delinquent or criminal acts, then combine with lesser numbers of acts if there is no significant difference in the relationship of that number of acts and the outcome being studied. Appendix C shows the ages used to define "early initiators" for each analyzed behavior-outcome pair.
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In this section we examine family structure as a measure of family environment. Other literature has examined how family structure may influence the choices made by these youths. However, as before, we take as given the point at which youths initiate into a risky behavior. We frame the question of interest around early initiators. Specifically, does adolescent family structure affect the outcomes for early initiators into risky behaviors? Although certain family types may have reduced the likelihood of initiating a certain behavior, nevertheless some adolescents will choose to do so. If those family types did not prevent the behavior from beginning, can they still help guide the adolescent to avoid deleterious long-term effects from engaging in the behavior? It is possible that certain family types help late initiators, but do not help early initiators. We limit our analysis specifically to address whether family type matters for those who have taken a "wrong" fork in the path.
The full set of regressions is found in Appendix D. A summary table isolating the family structure relationships precedes the full set of regression tables. It is not possible to discuss all results, but certain patterns emerge regarding early initiators as a whole. For nearly any adolescent risky behavior, living in an intact family reduces the likelihood of a bad adult economic outcome for an early initiator. In 19 of the 24 behavior-outcome pairs examined in the economic domain, those living with both biological parents at age 14 have the least, or nearly least, likely bad outcomes of any family type. They also generally have among the lowest probabilities for spending time in jail.
As we saw in the previous section, two biological parent families are not the best for preventing adult alcohol and drug problems, though they are not much different from other family types except fathers with stepmothers. Remarried fathers are generally best for minimizing the likelihood of a bad health outcome. Adolescents in single father families also again have lower probabilities of adult drug usage, though no real difference on adult alcohol problems. Taking these together, it once again appears that fathers are important for reducing the probability of an adult substance abuse problem, even for those at most risk due to early initiation.
Adolescents living in single mother households at age 14 generally fare worse in economic outcomes than do those in intact families, but better than those living in other family situations. Similarly they fare among the best at keeping out of jail. As seen before, single mothers actually do better than two biological parents at reducing the probability of an adult alcohol or drug problem, particularly alcohol abuse or dependence, given early initiation.
Marriage rates are lowest among those who were living with only one parent, while fairly similar across other family types. Adolescents living with only one parent at age 14 are also the most likely to be never married with children. On the other hand, conditional upon having married, divorce rates are highest among those who were living with their mother and a stepfather (35 percent) or with no biological parent (37 percent). Rates for other family types are consistently lower (22-27 percent).
While the direction of effects of adolescent family structure for early initiators is similar to those found for the sample as a whole, many magnitudes are different. Because there are so many comparisons one could make and this is not our focus, we simply note that adolescent family structure is associated with adult outcomes for adolescents who engage in risky behaviors at early ages. The extent to which these relationships are similar to, or different from, those that would be found for late (or non-) initiators is not critical. It is important to know that there are family forces that can influence the pathways of these early initiators such that the likelihood of bad outcomes can be reduced.
Section Summary
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We have addressed the question of whether adolescent family structure may influence the paths of early initiators and found that intact families are generally the best at helping adolescents avoid most negative consequences of risky behaviors. However, even in intact families, some adolescents will develop adulthood problems while others do not. In this section we go deeper into the family environment and consider another measure, the family's socioeconomic status, again represented by parents' education. Two adolescents from the same family type, both of whom initiate early into one or more risky behaviors, may face different consequences. One may end up with adulthood problems while the other doesn't. Within family types, what makes the difference? We seek to determine if parents' education plays a role in influencing the pathway for early initiators within a given family type.
In addition to limiting the sample to early initiators, we further restrict the analysis to sample members who lived in either of the two most common family types at age 14: two-biological parents and single mother households.(23) To study the impact of parents' education, we estimate the same regressions as above. We estimate each set of regressions separately for the two family types. This allows us to delve down a layer within the family, examining whether parents' education matters for early initiators within these family types. We use the same definitions of early initiators and again do not estimate any behavior-outcome pairs that do not have significant differences across the age of initiation categories. The full set of regressions appears in Appendix E (two biological parent families) and Appendix F (single mother families). A summary table isolating the relationships for each parent's education precedes the full set of regression tables in each appendix.
Restricting the sample to two-parent families only, we find that higher levels of parents' education generally reduce the likelihood of a bad adult economic outcome among early initiators. Small cell sizes make the numbers bounce around a lot and statistical significance frequently is not achieved. However, the direction seems consistent. The pattern seems to also hold for the likelihood of being incarcerated, but virtually none of the parameter estimates are statistically significant. Cell sizes dramatically impair our ability to draw conclusions in the family formation domain. About the only result that is consistent is that families with either parent having completed college have children who are less likely to be unmarried with children at age 33.
As with the full sample, the connection between parents' education and the likelihood of an adult problem with alcohol or drugs is contradictory. In general, in intact families mothers' education reduces the likelihood of an adult alcohol problem and increases the likelihood of an adult drug problem while fathers' education has exactly the opposite effect in both cases. We are reluctant to place too much emphasis on these findings since virtually none of the parameter estimates is statistically significant. The most important thing to consider, though, is how this fits with our earlier findings. Intact families were seen not to be the best for minimizing the likelihood of an adult alcohol or drug problem. Also, higher levels of parents' education were not always associated with better adult health outcomes. Now we observe seemingly quirky results for the impacts of mothers' and fathers' education when examining early initiators within intact families exclusively. Clearly there are processes within these families that are not captured here that influence the pathways to adult alcohol and drug problems.
When we restrict the sample to those who lived in single mother households when they were age 14, we examine the impact of education including the mother's education only.(24) Interestingly we see a pattern similar to the intact families. Greater mother's education for the most part reduces the likelihood of a poor economic outcome and has no clear effect on the probability of incarceration. As in intact families, the only adult family formation result that is clear is that college educated mothers are less likely to have offspring who are unmarried with children at age 33.
Once again, we also see that more education for the mother reduces the likelihood of an adult alcohol problem, but increases the likelihood of adult drug usage. It is interesting that this seemingly strange result holds for the case where we have limited the sample to those who lived in single mother households and we have included only the mother's educational attainment.
Section Summary
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20. An alternative question we could have posed would be whether family environment mitigates the impact of risky behaviors on adult outcomes for early initiators as compared with late initiators. We have chosen not to frame the question this way because we want to examine the effects of family environment given the choice to initiate at early ages. Those who initiate at later ages or never initiate are following a different path. Family environment may involve different processes for these groups. In addition, since our oldest group includes both late initiators and non-initiators, we cannot disentangle the influence of family environment for these two groups.
21. By limiting the sample to early initiators, the model is equivalent to fully inter-acting "early initiator" with all the variables in the regression, but only examining the results for the early initiators. Thus the estimated values for family structure or parents' education are similar to what would be obtained from interacting family structure and parents' education with age of initiation in the regressions in Chapter V. This functional form also allows all the other variables to have effects specifically for early initiators
22. This method of combining age groups to define early initiators makes the functional form only similar to, but not the same as, the fully interactive model described above.
23. Small sample sizes limit our ability to study other family types. Furthermore, this restriction provides the cleanest way to address the issue. In these two family situations, the measures of mothers' and fathers' education specifically relate to the parents with whom the youth has lived and do so exclusively. This would not be true in other family situations. For example, to study a family comprising the child's mother and a stepfather would require knowing the education of the mother and stepfather, and perhaps also the biological father. We would need to know the timing of the divorce (if there was one) and the re-marriage and the degree to which the father has stayed involved financially and directly with the child. Even knowing all of this, we would have to estimate a complicated relationship between the influence of different parents' education, biological and step, on the child. This places too many demands on the data. For single mother households, we face a similar, though not as complex problem. We do not know the financial or time contributions made by the absent father. However, because this family type is so common, we include it. Since we can only look at mothers' education, there may be significant omitted variable bias without a measure of father's education.
24. We also estimated the regressions including father's education to examine whether there were differences. However, some of the values lacked credibility, i.e. they were orders of magnitude different than previously observed and changed much too dramatically from the regression without father's education. At best, these estimates would be difficult to interpret since we do not have measures of the father's financial contribution or level of involvement with the youth.
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