Using State Child Labor Laws to Identify the Causal Effect of Youth Employment on Deviant Behavior and Academic Achievement

On the basis of prior research findings that employed youth, and especially intensively employed youth, have higher rates of delinquent behavior and lower academic achievement, scholars have called for limits on the maximum number of hours per week that teenagers are allowed to work. We use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to assess the claim that employment and work hours are causally related to adolescent problem behavior. We utilize a change model with age-graded child labor laws governing the number of hours per week allowed during the school year as instrumental variables. We find that these work laws lead to additional number of hours worked by youth, which then lead to increased high school dropout but decreased delinquency. Although counterintuitive, this result is consistent with existing evidence about the effect of employment on crime for adults and the impact of dropout on youth crime.

Family violence: Its relation to marital and parental satisfaction and family strengths

Previous research has shown the negative effects of violence on individual family members. However, a review of the literature reveals few studies that document the adverse effects of violence on family relationships. To assess these effects, 304 married parents anonymously completed a survey that included the following scales: conflict tactics, family strengths, marital satisfaction, and parent satisfaction. Results indicated significant decreases in perceived family strengths, marital satisfaction, and parent satisfaction as the use of physical violence among family members increased. These findings provide empirical support for the assumption that violence has a negative impact not only on individuals within a family but also on family relationships.     

The Changing Structure of American Cities: A Study of the Diffusion of Innovation

Using historical and numerical analysis and the five-part schema, this study finds that over the past 50 years structural modifications and adaptations by American cities have generally followed the standard S curve of the diffusion of innovation. In tests of Kaufman's and Hirshman's theories of epochs of change from representativeness to administrative efficiency, this study determines that mayor-council cities have, in a standard innovation diffusion S curve, adopted many of the key features of council-manager cities, increasing their administrative efficiency. At the same time, council-manager cities, again in an S curve, have adopted many of the key features of mayor-council cities, increasing their political responsiveness. Fewer cities are now either distinctly mayor-council or council-manager in form, and most cities are structurally less distinct, constituting a newly merged or hybrid model of local government—the type III city.     

Hitler's Shadow: Historical Analogies and the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait

Leaders often turn to history for guidance. Margaret Thatcher and George Bush were no exception when they responded to Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Bush and Thatcher used analogies to the 1930s, the Vietnam War and the Falklands War to frame the crisis, which significantly influenced their policies. They argued that Saddam Hussein was another Adolf Hitler and were determined not to repeat the mistakes of the Western response to the Axis in the 1930s or of the Vietnam War. There would be no 1930s-style appeasement of Iraq, and no slow escalation as had occurred in Vietnam. The prompt use of overwhelming force in the Gulf would succeed, Bush and Thatcher believed, just as the use of force had succeeded in the Falklands crisis, and just as such a policy, they believed, would have deterred the Axis in the early 1930s.     

Gun control in the United States

A.B., University of California, Berkeley, 1964; Ph.D., University of California, Irvine, 1970.     

Technology management

A recent assessment by the American Computer and Business Equipment Manufactures Association predicted that by the turn of the century three out of every four jobs in the industrial world and an increasing proportion in developing countries are likely to involve the use of VDUs. Richard Dedman and Gary Freer examine the legal implications of this development for employers, manufacturers and suppliers.