Running Away From Home: A Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Risk Factors and Young Adult Outcomes

Little is known about the adolescent risk factors and young adult health-related outcomes associated with running away from home. We examined these correlates of running away using longitudinal data from 4,329 youth (48% female, 85% white) who were followed from Grade 9 to age 21. Nearly 14% of the sample reported running away in the past year at Grade 10 and/or Grade 11. Controlling for demographics and general delinquency, running away from home was predicted by lack of parental support, school disengagement, greater depressive affect, and heavier substance use at Grade 9. In turn, runaways had higher drug dependence scores and more depressive symptoms at age 21 than non-runaways, even after taking these antecedent risk factors into account. Runaway status did not predict alcohol dependence risk at age 21. Results highlight the importance of substance use and depression, both as factors propelling adolescents to run away and as important long-term consequences of running away.     

The market for social norms

This article presents a semirigorous model in which a new normarises out of the workings of a market for norms. Change istriggered by a shift in either cost-benefit conditions or groupcomposition. Because individuals are heterogeneous in importantrespects, they respond differently to these triggering events.The first persons to supply new norms generally are individualswho have either superior technical knowledge of cost-benefitconditions, superior social knowledge of group dynamics, orspecial endowments that provide them with unusually high tangiblebenefits from norm reform. Members of the social audience observethe competing efforts of these norm suppliers and reward themost meritorious ones by conferring on them either esteem or,according to an alternative conception, new exchange opportunities.Under optimal conditions, members of the audience - key participantsin the demand side of the market for norms - do not free-ridebecause they incur no net costs when conferring their rewards.     

Forceful Self‐Help and Private Voice: How Schauer and McAdams Exaggerate a State's Ability to Monopolize Violence and Expression

Frederick Schauer's The Force of Law (2015) and Richard McAdams's The Expressive Powers of Law (2015) are noteworthy contributions. However, both authors exaggerate the importance of law, as opposed to other means of social control. Schauer largely omits the role that self‐help measures, ranging from negative gossip to violent self‐defense, play in deterring misconduct. Contrary to Max Weber, the state in practice cannot monopolize the legitimate use of physical force. McAdams valuably analyzes law's potentially expressive effects. He might have devoted more attention, however, to identifying the contexts in which state speech tends to be more salient than private speech, such as a statement by the pope or another esteemed private pundit.