How Career-ladder Jobs Increase Employment Prospects : Redeeming Lives from the Consequences of Youth Delinquency

This is a brilliant contribution to the existing literature on adolescent employment and crime.

It connects theory and research with public policy in a balanced manner and introduces the concept of career-ladder jobs as a guide to reduce crime and delinquency by looking at public policy and adolescent employment in a new way.

The impact of labor market participation on American youth has raised scholarly debates for several decades, but the relationship between employment and delinquency and criminal behaviours is not fully understood in the context of youths' life stage.

More recent studies that addressed the issue of youth employment and crime emphasize one variable, work intensity, and left plenty of unknown pieces in this puzzle.

This study introduces the concept of "career-ladder jobs" that deter job holders from committing delinquent and criminal behaviours.

A career-ladder position is defined as a job with significant upward mobility on a status ladder, and, to adolescents, these jobs encompass potential to be the start of an attractive career. Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 97 and structural equation modelling are used to test hypotheses and plausible causal paths derived from prior research and theoretical frameworks.

Results indicate that career-ladder jobs demonstrated a significant crime-decreasing effect, while job stability partially mediates the crime-decreasing effect of career-ladder jobs on delinquency and criminal acts.

From a crime-prevention standpoint, a job that pays little now, but improves the chances of a long-term career appears to be beneficial than a dead-end job that pays comparatively well in the short-term.

The findings also imply that the discussions of employment and of internships among youths should address the importance of future-oriented feature of occupations, and not just the immediate monetary gains from the employment.