Venue: The Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, 1 Towerview Drive, Durham, NC 27708-0120
Presentation
The Effect of Mental Health in Adolescence On Human Capital Formation: School and Neighborhood Factors
Objective: To examine whether mental health problems in adolescence lead to decreased human capital formation, and whether this relationship is heterogeneous across schools and across neighborhoods. Population: Students interviewed in Waves I and III of the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (AddHealth), a nationally representative survey of students in grades 7-12 at Wave I (1994-95). Wave III follow-up was conducted in 2001-02 when respondents were 18-27 years old. Study Design: Mixed models with fixed effects, random intercepts and random coefficients on mental health variables (also known as two-level cross-classified hierarchical models, a specific variant of random coefficient models) will be used. The dependent variable is years of schooling completed by Wave III. Mental health is defined as depressive symptoms, alcohol and other illicit drug abuse, delinquency, and suicidality at baseline. The models control for other individual, family, school and neighborhood characteristics. Findings: Mental health problems in adolescence, particularly externalizing behaviors (substance abuse, delinquency, suicidality), were associated with fewer years of schooling completed by Wave III. Statistically significant random intercepts indicate that human capital formation varies across schools and across neighborhoods, after controlling for observable school and neighborhood characteristics. The statistically significant random slope on the depressive symptoms variable indicates that the relationship between adolescent mental health and subsequent human capital formation also varies across schools and across neighborhoods. Conclusions: The findings from this study indicate that some schools and neighborhoods are associated with better outcomes for troubled adolescents. This could ultimately lead to the design of targeted interventions for adolescents. Since the adolescent years are when most students are making human capital investments, it is important to recognize which students are most at risk.