Youth depression and future criminal behavior.
Anderson, D. Mark ; Cesur, Resul ; Tekin, Erdal 等
I. INTRODUCTION
Major depression is a serious public health problem in the United
States and around the world. According to the World Health Organization
(WHO), depression is the leading cause of disability and the fourth
leading contributor to the global burden of disease. (1) The incidence
of mental health problems also runs high among children and adolescents.
For example, 8.1% of 2 million adolescents aged 12-17 experienced at
least one major depressive episode in 2009 (Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services Administration 2010). Furthermore, about 15 million
children meet the criteria to be diagnosed with a mental health disorder
(American Psychological Association 2008).
These problems constitute a major source of concern because the
consequences of depression are wide-ranging and long-lasting. The
literature covers a broad spectrum of outcomes influenced by depression
including educational attainment (Fletcher 2008; Wilcox-Gok et al. 2004,
2010), labor market productivity (Chatterji, Alegria, and Takeuchi 2011;
Fletcher 2013; Marcotte and Wilcox-Gok 2003; Ruhm 1992), substance use
(Greenfield et al. 1998; Rao, Daley, and Hammen 2000; Swendsen and
Merikangas 2000), and risky sexual behavior (Ramrakha etal. 2000; Shrier
et al. 2001; Stiffman et al. 1992). Moreover, the economic burden of
mental health disorders is substantial. It has been estimated that
annual treatment and disability payments are roughly $83.1 billion,
while the indirect costs associated with productivity loss are roughly
$51.5 billion per year (Ettner, Frank, and Kessler 1997; Greenberg
2003). Because of the substantial economic and social costs that
depression and other mental illnesses impose on society, the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services has identified improving mental
health as a vital objective. Accordingly, the goal set by the government
is to achieve a 10% reduction in the proportion of adolescents who
experience a major depressive episode by the year 2020. (2)
Not surprisingly, the association between mental health and
criminal activity has received considerable attention in the literature.
Research has shown that individuals with mental health disorders face
higher arrest rates, have records of past violence, and are more likely
to be victims of crime themselves (e.g., Choe, Teplin, and Abram 2008;
Donnellan et al. 2005; Elbogen and Johnson 2009; Teplin et al. 2005;
Trzesniewski et al. 2006; White et al. 2006). It has also been
documented that adult prisoners and incarcerated adolescents suffer from
mental illnesses at much higher rates than the general population (e.g.,
Marcotte and Markowitz 2011). (3) More specifically, studies have
identified depression as a motiving factor for criminal behavior (e.g.,
Broidy and Agnew 1997; Piquero and Sealock 2004; Swartz and Lurigio
2007; Woddis 1957-1958). Depression has frequently been linked to acts
of violence such as homicide (Benezech 1991; Benezech and Bourgeois
1992; Malmquist 1995). On the other hand, several studies have argued
that depression may decrease delinquent behavior because it reduces an
individual's energy and desire to act (Agnew 1992; Broidy 2001;
Mazerolle and Piquero 1997).
While associations between mental health and crime and, more
specifically, depression and crime have been considered in the
literature, the existing studies contain limitations. First, much of the
previous work has been descriptive in nature. (4) These studies are
usually motivated by the observation that mental health problems are
more common among incarcerated groups (e.g., Silver, Felson, and
Vaneseltine 2008; Teplin 1990; Wallace et al. 1998) or that criminal
behavior is higher among individuals with mental health disorders (e.g.,
Hodgins 1992; Swanson et al. 2002).
Second, most previous studies use cross-sectional data to study the
relationship between mental health and crime. Exceptions include several
cohort studies that follow individuals over time to illustrate that
those suffering from mental health disorders are more likely to exhibit
criminality or become incarcerated (e.g., Arsenault et al. 2000;
Brennan, Mednick, and Hodgins 2000). However, these studies generally
use data from outside the United States and rely on a limited set of
controls to account for differences across individuals that could be
correlated with both mental health and criminal behavior. Therefore, it
is not clear-cut to move from a correlation between depression and crime
to a statement about causality due to a multitude of omitted factors,
such as financial stress or poor parenting. While these factors are
likely to have an independent effect on criminal behavior, they may also
influence crime through affecting mental health. In addition, the
direction of causality may go from crime to mental health. For example,
poor mental health may be a result of incarceration (Marcotte and
Markowitz 2011; Vermeiren, De Clippele, and Deboutte 2000).
Cross-sectional or observational studies cannot account for this
problem. Additionally, the crime and mental health variables often used
in these studies are based on arrest or incarceration records and
official reports of clinical diagnoses. Consequently, many individuals
engaging in crime and/or suffering from mental illnesses go unnoticed
and are left untreated.
Finally, much of the previous research has used data drawn from
nonrepresentative populations (e.g., prison populations). While these
studies suggest that a link between mental health and future criminality
exists, the generalizability of their results is questionable.
This article makes two valuable contributions to the literature on
mental health and crime. First, we use data from a longitudinal survey,
which allows us to study the long-term relationship between adolescent
depression and adult criminality. Specifically, the National
Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health) spans a period
that covers both adolescence and adulthood. Previous studies that have
relied on cross-sectional data are only able to examine the
contemporaneous relationship between depression and crime (either at
adolescence or adulthood). However, studying the long-term consequences
of depression is important because it has been shown that childhood
depression has substantial continuity into adulthood (Greden 2001;
Weissman et al. 1999). Similarly, early onset of criminal behavior
greatly increases criminal tendencies later in life, and it becomes
harder for individuals with a criminal background to invest in legal
human capital that could allow them to make a transition from the
illegal to the legal labor market. The use of longitudinal data also
allows us to account for the effect of criminal behavior in adolescence
on the propensity to engage in subsequent crime. Moreover, focusing on
the long-term consequences of depression on crime minimizes concerns
associated with reverse causality.
Second, we improve upon the existing literature by using multiple
estimators including fixed effects at the neighborhood and family levels
and propensity score matching. For example, by including school fixed
effects, we account for the possibility that adolescents who grow up in
disadvantaged neighborhoods may be simultaneously more likely to have
poor mental health and engage in criminal behaviors. In addition, by
including family fixed effects, we control for important household
characteristics (e.g., socioeconomic status and parenting style) that
are typically shared by siblings. To complement our fixed effects
estimators, we also consider a propensity score matching approach that
does not rely on within-school or within-family variation in depression
for identification. While our estimates are likely to be purged of
sources of unobserved heterogeneity that have plagued previous studies,
it is important to keep in mind that producing causal effects of
adolescent depression on adult criminality is a challenging task.
Controlled experiments are not feasible given the nature of the research
question.
The findings in this article have important implications for
understanding the potential for policies to improve outcomes for
children and their families. The social cost of crime is substantial.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, law enforcement agencies
recently made a total of 13.7 million arrests. (5) Furthermore, the U.S.
prison population exceeds 1.5 million inmates (Bureau of Justice
Statistics 2013). Designing sensible policies to reduce these numbers
requires a full assessment of the factors that cause these behaviors
with an understanding of both the short-term and long-term dynamics. Our
findings indicate that adolescents who suffer from depression face a
significantly increased probability of engaging in property crime. We
find little robust evidence that adolescent depression influences the
likelihood of engaging in violent crime or the selling of illicit drugs.
Our estimates imply that the lower-bound direct economic cost of
property crime associated with adolescent depression is about 227
million dollars per year.
The remainder of this article proceeds as follows. In Section II,
we describe our data. In Section III, we present the conceptual
framework and describe the estimation strategies. The results are
summarized in Section IV, while conclusions and suggestions for future
research are discussed in Section V.
II. DATA
The data used in this article come from the restricted version of
the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). The
Add Health is a nationally representative sample of United States
youths, who were in grades 7 through 12 during the 1994-1995 academic
year. (6) Adolescents were surveyed from 132 schools that were selected
to ensure representation with respect to region of country, urbanicity,
school size and type, and ethnicity. High schools that participated in
the study were asked to identify feeder schools that included a 7th
grade and sent at least five graduates to that high school. The feeder
schools were chosen with probability proportional to the number of
students sent to the high school.
In Wave I, data were collected from adolescents, their parents,
siblings, friends, relationship partners, fellow students, and school
administrators. The Add Health cohort has been followed with three
subsequent in-home surveys in 1996, 2000-2001, and 2007-2008. The data
contain information on respondents' social, economic,
psychological, and health status. In addition to individual-level
information, the Add Health data include information on family,
neighborhood, school, and peer network characteristics. The Add Health
data also contain information on a genetic oversample of siblings. We
take advantage of the sibling sample to better control for unobserved
heterogeneity in the relationship between depression and crime. The
primary analyses in this article use data from the Wave I and Wave IV
in-home surveys of the Add Health. These data are useful for
investigating the relationship between adolescent depressive symptoms
and adult criminality because they span a period of roughly 13 years.
The original Add Health respondents were between ages 25 and 32 in Wave
IV.
Add Health is ideal for the purposes of this study for a number of
reasons. First, it was specifically designed to provide rich information
on adolescents' health and risk behaviors and is considered to be
the largest and most comprehensive survey of adolescents ever undertaken
(Mocan and Tekin 2006a, 2006b). Aside from containing a diagnostic
instrument for depression, a detailed set of questions on delinquent
behaviors were asked to respondents in each wave. Second, the
longitudinal nature of the Add Health allows us to examine the long-term
relationship between depression and criminal behavior. Third, since we
have information on criminal behavior in all waves, we can account for
baseline differences in these behaviors. Finally, the neighborhood and
family identifiers allow us to account for many of the confounding
factors that may bias the estimated relationship between depression and
crime. (7)
A. Measures of Depression
Our empirical analyses consider a measure of depression that is
based on the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) Scale.
The CES-D Scale, originally developed by Radloff (1977), is a widely
used and reliable depressive symptomatology metric (e.g., Cornwell 2003;
Fletcher 2010; Rees and Sabia 2011; Tekin, Liang, and Mocan 2009; Tekin
and Markowitz 2008). The Add Health survey includes 18 of the 20
questions that constitute the CES-D Scale. (8) Respondents were asked
such questions as how often they felt "lonely,"
"depressed," or "too tired to do things." (9) The
possible responses were "never or rarely" (=0);
"sometimes" (=1); "a lot of the time" (=2); and
"most of the time or all of the time" (=3). Following previous
research, we sum the coded responses to generate a score between 0 and
54. (10) Then, we rescale the score to be out of 60 so that it
corresponds to the original 20-item CES-D Scale (see, e.g., Duncan and
Rees 2005; Rees, Sabia, and Argys 2009; Sabia and Rees 2008). Finally, a
binary indicator of depression is created based on the cut-off points of
22 for males and 24 for females in the CES-D distribution (Roberts,
Lewinsohn, and Seeley 1991). Dichotomous measures constructed in this
fashion are frequently used by social scientists, psychologists, and
medical researchers (see, e.g., Fletcher 2010; Goodman and Capitman
2000; Hallfors et al. 2005; Sabia and Rees 2008) and focus attention on
the right-hand tail of the distribution, the portion of the distribution
where clinical diagnoses of major depression are made (Cesur, Sabia, and
Tekin 2013; Sabia and Rees 2008).
B. Measures of Criminal Behavior
The Add Health contains a large number of questions related to
delinquent and criminal activities. These questions are similar to those
available in most other surveys and to the official definitions of
"crime" used by government sources such as the Bureau of
Justice Statistics. (11)
We focus on self-reports of property crime, violent crime, the
selling of illicit drugs, and a measure that encompasses any type of
nondrug-related criminal behavior. (12) Specifically, we construct a
binary indicator, Property, to indicate involvement in property crime
using answers to the following three questionnaire items: In the past 12
months, (i) how often did you deliberately damage property that
didn't belong you?', (ii) how often did you steal something
worth less than $50?; (iii) how often did you steal something worth more
than $50?; and (iv) how often did you go into a house or building to
steal something? The possible answers are "never," "1 or
2 times," "3 or 4 times," and "5 or more
times." We coded the indicator Property as equal to 1 if the
respondent committed one of these four acts at least once in the past 12
months, and equal to 0 otherwise. Similarly, a binary indicator,
Violent, is constructed using answers to the following two questionnaire
items: In the past 12 months, (i) how often did you use or threaten to
use a weapon to get something from someone?; (ii) how often did you hurt
someone badly enough in a physical fight that he or she needed care from
a doctor or nurse?; (iii) did you pull a gun or knife on someone?; and
(iv) did you stab or shoot someone? Again, we coded the variable Violent
as equal to 1 if the respondent committed one of these four acts at
least once in the past 12 months, and equal to 0 otherwise. The binary
variable, Selling Drugs, is constructed in a similar fashion using
answers to the questionnaire item: In the past 12 months, how often did
you sell marijuana or other drugs? Finally, we coded the variable
Nondrug as equal to 1 if the respondent committed either a property or a
violent crime in the past 12 months, and equal to 0 otherwise. These
criminal acts comprise the vast majority of the illegal activities
committed by the Add Health respondents.
Table 1 shows the prevalence of criminal behaviors by depression
status across Waves I and IV of the Add Health. Note that our main
depression variable is measured at the time of Wave I. The descriptive
statistics are displayed separately for the full sample and the sibling
sub-sample. Consistent with declining criminal tendencies between
adolescence and adulthood, the proportion of respondents who report
committing illegal acts falls substantially between Waves I and IV. As
shown in column (1), 29.4% and 21% of respondents reported committing
property and violent crimes in Wave I, respectively, but these
propensities decrease to 7.5% and 13.3% in Wave IV. Similarly, the act
of selling illicit drugs decreases from 7.5% to 4.2% during the same
period. The reductions in criminal propensities between Waves I and IV
are substantial for both depressed and nondepressed individuals.
Columns (2) and (3) in Table 1 present the fraction of Add Health
respondents reporting various forms of criminal acts by depression
status. The prevalence of criminal behaviors is much higher among the
depressed group compared to the nondepressed group in Wave I. But,
somewhat surprisingly, the difference in crime between the two groups
becomes slightly narrower in Wave IV. Column (4) shows that the fraction
of siblings who report criminal behaviors is similar to that reported by
the full sample. Moreover, as shown in columns (5) and (6), the
differences in criminal behaviors between the depressed and
non-depressed sibling subsample are larger in Wave 1 than in Wave IV,
again a pattern similar to that exhibited by the full sample. In fact,
the differences are statistically significant only for property and
nondrug crimes between depressed and nondepressed siblings in Wave IV.
(13)
C. Explanatory Variables
The relationship between adolescent depression and adult crime may
be influenced by a host of factors, and failing to control for these
factors will bias the estimated effect of depression on crime. One
particular advantage of the Add Health data set is that it allows us to
account for a rich set of individual and family background
characteristics that may be correlated with both depression and criminal
behavior. In addition to the standard demographic characteristics, such
as binary indicators for age, gender, race, and ethnicity, we consider
individual-level controls for religiosity, birthweight, whether the
respondent was born in the United States, and whether the respondent was
an only child. (14)
At the household level, we control for parental marital status and
presence of the biological father. These two variables are important
because parental divorce and father involvement have been linked to
adolescent mental health, youth behavior, and long-term young adult
outcomes (Carlson 2006; Cherlin et al. 1998; Cobb-Clark and Tekin 2014;
Finley and Schwartz 2007). We also control for mother's education
and household income because socioeconomic status is a well-known
determinant of child development, with effects persisting into adulthood
(e.g., Bradley and Corwyn 2002; Goodman, Slap, and Huang 2003). Lastly,
we include in our models an indicator for whether the respondent's
biological father has ever spent time in jail. Children with fathers who
have been incarcerated are not only more likely to suffer from
depressive symptoms but are themselves more likely to commit crime when
older (e.g., Hjalmarsson and Lindquist 2012; Wilbur et al. 2007). The
household-level characteristics that we consider are drawn from Wave I,
the same period adolescent depression was measured. To retain sample
size, we construct binary indicators to represent information on missing
data. The list of explanatory variables is shown in Table A1 for the
full sample as well as separately by Wave I depression status. The
descriptive statistics presented in Table A1 clearly indicate the
importance of controlling for differences between children and their
parents. For example, we see that children who fall into the depressed
category in Wave I are more likely to have a father who had spent time
in jail and are more likely to have divorced parents. Overall, children
with poorer parents in Wave I have a higher prevalence of depression
than those from higher income households.
In the bottom panel of Table Al, we consider factors that might
differ between siblings in an attempt to explore the reasons for
variation in sibling depression within families. It is not uncommon for
some siblings within a family to exhibit depressive symptoms, while
others do not (e.g., Hoffman 1991; Rende et al. 1993). The question is
whether this has anything to do with the factors that are also
correlated with later criminal behavior and not controlled for in our
models. As shown in the bottom panel of Table Al, individuals with
depression are more likely to have bad temperament and a learning
disability in Wave I as reported by their parents compared to those with
no depression. They are also more likely to have ADHD based on a
question in Wave IV about whether a doctor, nurse, or other health care
provider ever told the respondent that he/she had attention problems,
ADD, or ADHD. On the other hand, individuals with depression are less
likely to have been breastfed, based on a question answered by their
mothers. This pattern is true for both the general sample and the
sibling sample. While there appear to be some differences in preexisting
conditions among siblings in certain characteristics that might possibly
be correlated with both depression and future crime, controlling for
them does not change our results in any appreciable way. (15)
III. EMPIRICAL STRATEGY
A relationship between depression during adolescence and adult
criminal behavior can be analyzed within the framework developed by
Becker (1968) and Ehrlich (1973), which posits that individuals engage
in crime based on a comparison of the expected utility from criminal
activity to the expected utility from legal labor market opportunities.
Depression during adolescence may influence this relationship in a
number of ways. For example, depressed individuals may face a
productivity penalty in the labor market, which may increase the
relative rewards from engaging in illegal activities. Depression may
also affect an individual's evaluation of arrest and conviction
probabilities or depressed individuals may believe they face softer
penalties due to their mental health status (Fletcher and Wolfe 2009).
While a path from depression to crime is easy to elaborate,
establishing an empirical link presents a number of difficult
challenges. The primary difficulty in estimating the effects of
adolescent depression on adult criminal behavior is due to the potential
for unobserved heterogeneity that could confound the relationship. One
can imagine a host of personal, family, school, and community factors
that are potentially associated with both depression and crime. To
address this empirical challenge, we employ several estimation
strategies. First, we begin by considering the following equation:
(1) [Crime.sub.i4] = [alpha] + [[beta].sub.1] [Depression.sub.i1] +
[X.sub.i4][[beta].sub.2] + [X.sub.i1][[beta].sub.3] + [[member
of].sub.i4],
where i indexes the individual respondent and the numeric subscript
indicates the wave during which the variables were measured.
Specifically, [Crime.sub.i4] represents a criminal behavior measured
during Wave IV. The variable Depression,] is a binary indicator that is
equal to 1 if the respondent scored above the CES-D scale threshold in
Wave I, and equal to 0 otherwise. The vectors [X.sub.i4] and [X.sub.i1]
contain the personal and family characteristics described above that may
influence an individual's propensity to engage in criminal behavior
and are measured at Waves IV and I, respectively. Finally, [[member
of].sub.i4] is a random error term and [alpha], [[beta].sub.1],
[[beta].sub.2], and [[beta].sub.3] are the parameters to be estimated.
Equation (1) is estimated with OLS for ease of interpretation. (16)
Because the Add Health is a school-based survey, the standard errors are
corrected for clustering at the school level. (17)
We consider several channels through which adolescent depression
may impact adult criminal behavior and assess the extent to which the
relationship between depression and crime is influenced by these
channels. First, in accordance with previous research, we recognize that
mental illness can impede human capital accumulation and have a negative
effect on earnings and employment (e.g., Ettner et al. 1997; Fletcher
2009,2010,2013; Marcotte and Wilcox-Gok 2003; Wilcox-G5k et al. 2004).
If individuals suffering from depression face a wage penalty in the
labor market, then we also expect them to face a decreased opportunity
cost of crime. Second, we consider that adolescent depression may impact
adult crime through adult depression. More specifically, if those who
suffer from depression as children are more likely to be depressed as
adults, then it may not be adolescent depression per se that is
influencing criminal behavior. For example, Pine et al. (1999)
illustrate that symptoms of major depression in adolescence strongly
predict adult episodes of major depression. Third, there is evidence to
suggest that depressive symptoms are related to a child's level of
future expectations and impulsive behavior (e.g., d'Acremont and
Van der Linden 2007; Wyman et al. 1993). To the extent these
characteristics persist over time, one concern is that they not only
predict youth depression but also adult criminality.
Another possible channel through which depression may lead to
criminal behavior is by affecting a person's ability to evaluate
the true costs and benefits associated with risk taking. An
individual's decision to engage in crime is assumed to be a
function of the anticipated costs and benefits of their actions (Becker
1968). However, these expected costs and benefits may be influenced by
depression experienced during adolescence. For example, depressed
individuals may view the future as uncertain or unpredictable and this
may affect assessment of their own life expectancy. Therefore, these
individuals may discount the future consequences of their behavior and
see little reason to delay activities that may generate immediate
rewards. Such present orientation has been shown to be associated with
increased propensities to engage in risky behaviors, including crime
(e.g., Brezina, Tekin, and Topalli 2009; Hill, Ross, and Low 1997;
Wilson and Daly 1997). To address the role of these potential pathways,
we estimate Equation (1) while controlling for education, employment
status, a detailed set of occupational indicators, and two variables
that proxy for an individual's expectations of the future: (18)
(2) [Crime.sub.i4] = [alpha] + [[beta].sub.1] [Depression.sub.i1] +
[X.sub.i4][[beta].sub.2] + [X.sub.i1][[beta].sub.3] +
[M.sub.i][[beta].sub.4] + [[epsilon].sub.i4],
where [M.sub.i] is the vector of mechanisms described above.
If adolescent depression was exogenous after accounting for
observable individual and family characteristics, then OLS estimations
of Equations (1) and (2) would yield consistent estimates of the impact
of depression on adult crime. However, exogeneity is likely an
unrealistic assumption due to the reasons mentioned above, even after
controlling for a large number of covariates. One particular concern is
neighborhood-level unobservables. For instance, adolescents in
economically poor neighborhoods may experience higher rates of emotional
and mental health problems (e.g., Caspi et al. 2000; Leventhal and
Brooks-Gunn 2000). These individuals are also likely to face poor labor
market prospects, which may raise their propensities to commit crime.
Similarly, young people attending schools in these neighborhoods may
acquire poorer human capital, which may, again, lead to future criminal
activities by reducing the opportunity costs of such acts. Finally,
persistent differences in income and resources across school districts
and neighborhoods may be associated with differences in rates of
depression and crime in these localities and failing to account for
these differences may generate biased estimates. Because of these
concerns, we augment Equation (1) with school fixed effects:
(3) [Crime.sub.i4] = [alpha] + [[beta].sub.1][Depression.sub.i1] +
[X.sub.i4][[beta].sub.2] + [X.sub.i1][[beta].sub.3] +
[M.sub.i][[beta].sub.4] + [[lambda].sub.s] + [[epsilon].sub.i4]
where [[lambda].sub.s] is a vector of school fixed effects.
Identification in Equation (3) comes from differences in depression
status between individuals who attended the same school.
While school fixed effects capture many unobserved factors across
neighborhoods that may be correlated with both depression and crime, the
richness of our data set provides a further opportunity to account for
unobserved heterogeneity. We exploit the longitudinal nature of the Add
Health and control for the respondent's criminal propensity
measured at Wave I:
(4) [Crime.sub.i4] = [alpha] + [[beta].sub.1][Depression.sub.i1] +
[X.sub.i4][[beta].sub.2] + [X.sub.i1][[beta].sub.3] +
[M.sub.i][[beta].sub.4] + [Crime.sub.i1] + [[lambda].sub.s] +
[[epsilon].sub.i4],
where [Crime.sub.i1] is the dependent variable measured during Wave
I. The inclusion of a lagged dependent variable is a useful way to
account for remaining unobserved heterogeneity that may be
simultaneously correlated with adolescent depression and subsequent
criminal behavior (e.g., Cesur, Sabia, and Tekin 2013; Cobb-Clark and
Tekin 2014; Herbst and Tekin 2014; Rees and Sabia 2011).
While Equation (4) is likely to control for important sources of
bias, it is possible that unobserved factors at the family level that
are correlated with depression and subsequent criminal behavior exist. A
poor home environment may simultaneously increase the likelihood a child
is depressed and commits crime later in life. To control for unobserved
characteristics at the family level, we estimate family fixed effects
models of the following form:
(5) [Crime.sub.i4] = [alpha] + [[beta].sub.1][Depression.sub.i1] +
[X.sub.i4][[beta].sub.2] + [K.sub.i1] [[beta].sub.3] + [v.sub.f] +
[[epsilon].sub.i4]
where i indexes the individual in family f. In this specification,
[v.sub.f] represents a vector of unique identifiers for each family and
[K.sub.i4] and [K.sub.i1] represent a parsimonious set of controls that
vary between siblings (i.e., age at Wave IV, gender, birthweight,
height, weight, birth order, and two measures of parental favoritism).
Consequently, Equation (5) accounts for unobserved characteristics that
are shared by siblings. Note that identification in Equation (5) comes
from discordant reports in depression status among siblings within a
family. (19) We also estimate alternative versions of Equation (5) that
include a vector of potential mechanisms and a lagged dependent
variable. A comparison of the results from Equations (1) through (5)
provide insights to the degree to which our estimates may be biased due
to omitted factors at the neighborhood and family levels (e.g., Currie
and Stabile 2006; Fletcher 2010; Fletcher and Wolfe 2008). (20)
Finally, we consider a propensity score matching (PSM) analysis.
This approach consists of matching treated adolescents (i.e., depressed
adolescents) with untreated adolescents based on their observable
characteristics, and then comparing their criminal behaviors during
adulthood. An average treatment effect on the treated (ATT) is obtained
by averaging individual-level differences in behavior between the
treated and untreated groups.
There are several advantages to using PSM methods. First, matching
estimators do not impose functional form restrictions, nor do they
assume the treatment effect is homogeneous across populations (Zhao
2005). Second, with a sufficient vector of observables, PSM has been
shown to yield estimates that compare favorably with experimental
studies (Michalopoulos, Bloom, and Hill 2004; Smith and Todd 2001).
Lastly, within the context of our study, PSM does not rely on
differences in depression status within schools or families for
identification.
In practice, a treatment propensity p(X) for each observation in
the sample is estimated. This step requires regressing adolescent
depression status on a vector of observable characteristics with a
binary choice apparatus (e.g., a probit or logit regression). The sample
is then split into k equally spaced intervals of the propensity score.
Within each interval, it is tested whether the average propensity score
of the treated units differs from that of the untreated units. If this
test fails in an interval, the interval is split in half and retested.
This process is repeated until the average propensity score of treated
and untreated units is the same in all intervals. Within each interval,
it is also required that the means of each characteristic do not differ
between treated and untreated observations. (21) Treated and untreated
adolescents are matched based on their propensity scores using an
algorithm and the differences in their behavioral outcomes are
calculated. The ATT is obtained by averaging these differences across
all matches.
Because it is not necessarily clear a priori which matching
algorithm should be implemented, it is standard practice to present
results from multiple techniques (see, e.g., Anderson 2013; Mocan and
Tekin 2006a, 2006b; Morris 2007). We consider the nearest neighbor,
^-nearest neighbor, and within caliper matching algorithms. In general,
the choice of one matching algorithm over another involves a tradeoff
between variance and bias. (22)
IV. RESULTS
Table 2 presents estimates of [[beta].sub.1] from Equations (1)-(4)
for each of the four crime outcomes. (23) Panel A shows baseline
correlations from an OLS model with no control variables. These
estimates clearly point to a strong positive correlation between
depression during adolescence and subsequent criminality. The results in
Panel B are from models that include the basic controls described above.
Interestingly, the estimate on property crime increases by 27% and the
estimate on violent crime decreases by 20%, suggesting that the factors
captured by our basic controls have opposing effects on criminality.
Both the estimates on the selling of illicit drugs and nondrug crimes
increase by 0.3 percentage points. While the magnitudes change, all four
estimates remain positive and statistically significant at conventional
levels. These estimates indicate that those who suffer from depression
during adolescence face a 4.7 percentage-point higher probability of
committing a property crime, a 2.0 percentage-point higher probability
of committing a violent crime, a 1.3 percentage-point higher probability
of selling illicit drugs, and a 4.5 percentage-point higher probability
of committing a nondrug crime during the past 12 months. In addition to
being statistically significant, these estimates are large in magnitude,
corresponding to effect sizes of approximately 63% for property crime,
15% for violent crime, 31% for the selling of illicit drugs, and 22% for
nondrug crime.
Panel C shows estimates from models that control for educational
attainment, employment status, log earnings, a vector of occupational
indicators, and proxies for risk perceptions as specified in Equation
(2). These variables are included because they represent potential
channels through which adolescent depression may influence subsequent
criminality. Upon including these measures, we see that the coefficient
estimates in the violent crime and the selling of drugs models decrease
in magnitude such that they are no longer statistically significant at
conventional levels. It is interesting, however, that the inclusion of
these additional controls has little effect on the estimated depression
coefficient in the models for property and nondrug crime. In other
words, depression during adolescence continues to have long-lasting
effects on these crimes that cannot be accounted for by lower
educational attainment, poor labor market performance, or changes in
risk perceptions.
Panel D presents the estimates for models that include school fixed
effects. The estimates with school fixed effects are nearly identical to
those in Panel B, implying that neighborhood- and community-level
characteristics are orthogonal to the relationship between depression
and subsequent criminality upon controlling for family-and
individual-level attributes. (24)
Finally, we present estimates from the specifications that also
control for criminal behavior during Wave I. Not surprisingly,
adolescents who are engaged in criminal behavior in Wave I are much more
likely to do so again in Wave IV. This strong persistence in criminality
is reflected by the highly significant and large estimates reported in
Panel E of Table 2. In particular, the degree of persistence in crime
over time is 5.5 percentage points for property crime, 2.8 percentage
points for violent crime, 8.2 percentage points for the selling of
illicit drugs, and 5.2 percentage points for any nondrug crime.
Remarkably, even after controlling for criminal behavior in Wave I, the
impacts of adolescent depression on subsequent property and nondrug
crimes remain sizeable and statistically significant. In particular,
adolescent depression is associated with a 3.5 percentage-point increase
in the propensity to commit a property crime and a 2.9 percentage-point
increase in the propensity to commit a nondrug crime. (25) One
interpretation of the robustness of our estimates to controlling for
past crime is that the control variables and fixed effects in earlier
panels do a good job of accounting for unobservable factors that might
be correlated with both youth depression and later criminal behavior.
While the results presented in Table 2, especially those in Panel
E, are indicative of a causal relationship between adolescent depression
and future criminal behavior, they may still suffer from bias due to
potential unobserved heterogeneity. To further address this issue, we
consider models that employ the sibling subsample available in the Add
Health. In Table 3, we show results from the sibling analyses in steps
similar to those presented in Table 2.
Correlations from the OLS models with no controls are displayed in
Panel A of Table 3. The OLS estimates using the sibling sample with the
basic control variables are shown in Panel B. Despite the substantial
reduction in sample size, the relationship between adolescent depression
and future crime remains statistically significant for the property and
nondrug crimes. It is useful to compare these estimates to those in
Table 2 in order to assess how the sample change impacts the estimates.
Panel A of Table 3 indicates that the OLS estimates are uniformly larger
in the sibling subsample than in the full sample. One possible
explanation for the larger estimates in the sibling subsample may be due
to a nonlinear relationship between depression and future crime among
siblings. If, for example, siblings are more vulnerable to the effects
of depression, then depression could have a larger effect on crime. As
shown in Panel C, the estimates for the relationship between adolescent
depression and future criminality change little when we add the
potential mediators. In Panel D, we attempt to account for the
possibility that depression experienced by a sibling may have spillover
effects that influence the respondent's criminal behavior later in
life. To do this, we include a binary indicator for whether any of the
siblings in the family reported having depression in Wave I. We find
that depression of any sibling had a (statistically insignificant)
positive association with the criminal behavior of the respondent during
adulthood. The inclusion of this indicator has little effect on our
estimates of interest.
The models that control for family fixed effects are shown in
Panels E and F of Table 3. In Panel E, we present fixed effects
estimates from specifications with potential mediators and basic
controls that differ between siblings. In Panel F, we include the
right-hand-side variables from Panel E and add a lagged dependent
variable. These estimates show that adolescent depression is still a
statistically significant predictor of adult property crime. The
estimate in Panel F represents a 5.8 percentage-point increase in the
propensity to commit a property crime and is statistically significant
at the 10% level. (26,27) The estimate on the nondrug crime coefficient
is less precisely estimated and loses statistical significance upon
controlling for family fixed effects. Also note that adding the lagged
dependent variable in Panel F of Table 3 has little impact on the
estimated effect of adolescent depression on future crime. (28) The fact
that the estimate on property crime remains robust after using the
sibling sample and controlling for education, employment, risk
perceptions, and lagged criminality is a strong indication that a causal
relationship exists between adolescent depression and the decision to
engage in property crime later in life.
Next, we conduct analyses controlling for comorbid conditions and
substance use. To do so, we include binary variables to indicate the
following individual-level characteristics: prior diagnosis of attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder (measured at Wave IV), prior diagnosis of
anxiety (measured at Wave IV), prior marijuana use (measured at Wave I),
prior alcohol use (measured at Wave I), and prior use of any drug
(measured at Wave IV). (29) Research has shown a link between attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder and criminal behavior (e.g., Fletcher and
Wolfe 2009; Mannuzza, Klein, and Moulton 2008, Mannuzza et al. 2004;
Sourander et al. 2007) and between substance use and criminal behavior
(Carpenter 2007; Markowitz 2005). We present the results from these
models in Table 4. In Panel A of Table 4, we show results from the most
comprehensive specification for the full sample OLS models, which, in
addition to comorbid conditions, include school fixed effects, a full
set of family and individual characteristics, and a lagged dependent
variable. These estimates are very similar to those in Panel E of Table
2. In particular, depression in adolescence is associated with a 3.8
percentage-point increase in property crime and a 3.1 percentage-point
increase in nondrug crimes. We repeat this analysis for the sibling
sample in Panel B of Table 4. Similar to Panel F of Table 3, the
estimate on property crime remains large in magnitude and statistically
significant when we control for comorbid conditions. These findings
suggest that the association between adolescent depression and adult
criminal behavior is unlikely to operate through these other conditions.
(30)
Previous studies have shown that there are gender differences in
both offending (Daly and Chesney-Lind 1988; Steffensmeier and Allan
1995) and the experience of depression (Compas andHammen 1994;
Culbertson 1997; Gjerde, Block, and Block 1988). For example, studies
examining personality characteristics of adolescents with depressive
symptoms have found that depression is manifested in internalizing
patterns of behavior among females (e.g., passivity), but is more likely
to be manifested in externalizing patterns of behavior among males
(e.g., aggression and conduct disorder). In Table 5, we present
estimates from our most comprehensive specification (see Panel E in
Table 2) for each gender separately. Despite reductions in sample size,
we still find large positive effects of youth depression on adult
property crime for both males and females. Our estimates also indicate
that youth depression is associated with increases in nondrug crimes and
the selling of illicit drugs for females during adulthood. (31)
Lastly, Table 6 presents results from a propensity score matching
analysis. (32) A benefit of this approach is that our identifying
variation does not rely solely on within-school or within-family
differences in depression status. The results largely confirm our
findings above. Regardless of the matching algorithm used, youth
depression is associated with an increase in the propensity to commit
property and nondrug crimes as an adult, and these estimates are
statistically significant at conventional levels. (33) While youth
depression shares a positive relationship with violent crime and the
selling of illicit drugs during adulthood, these estimates are
statistically indistinguishable from 0.
V. CONCLUSION
Understanding the type of mental health problems that precede
future criminal behavior is critical to developing effective
intervention programs targeted at young people who suffer from these
disorders. The results in this paper provide strong support for a
positive and causal relationship between depression during adolescence
and the probability of committing property crime during adulthood. Our
results are robust across multiple specifications that control for a
rich set of individual, family, and neighborhood characteristics. It is
also remarkable that this relationship persists even after accounting
for the several channels through which the relationship is expected to
manifest itself. This suggests that there is an independent effect of
childhood depression on future property crime that cannot be accounted
for by these mechanisms. Moreover, our findings persist even when we
compare individuals who attend the same schools or individuals who are
siblings. Thus, we find no evidence to suggest that confounders at the
school, neighborhood, or family level account for the relationship
between depression and crime.
Crime is a problem that imposes substantial costs on society. These
findings imply that policies designed to reduce depression at young ages
may have real downstream benefits on criminal behavior. To put the
magnitudes of our estimates into perspective, we consider the following
back-of-the-envelope calculations. According to statistics from the
National Crime Victimization Survey, the total economic loss to victims
of property crime is 16.1 billion dollars for a total of 17.5 million
crimes. These numbers translate into a per victim cost of approximately
917 dollars per property crime. (34) An estimate for the annual per
victim cost of depression associated with property crime can be obtained
by multiplying this dollar amount by the estimate of 0.058 from our
preferred specification (Panel F of Table 3) and then multiplying the
resulting figure by the incidence of adolescent depression in our sample
of 0.104 (= 917 x 0.058 x 0.104 = 5.53 dollars). Given that there were
41 million people in the United States aged 25 through 34 in 2010, this
implies a total cost of roughly 227 million dollars per year. Note,
however, that the cost of 5.53 dollars per victim is likely an
underestimate since there are also costs associated with property crime
burdened by nonvictims. As a result, we view the approximation of 227
million dollars as a lower bound for the economic cost of property crime
due to adolescent depression.
While our study points to a previously undocumented benefit of
reducing the prevalence of adolescent depression, this paper does not
come without limitations. In particular, the empirical methods we use
are quasi-experimental and, thus, are only as good as our set of control
variables. If our controls and fixed effects do not absorb the important
sources of unobserved heterogeneity for the relationship between youth
depression and adult criminality, then threats of bias remain. Beyond
this, future research should aim to establish the exact mechanisms
through which adolescent depression influences the propensity to engage
in property crime as an adult. We have controlled for a host of
potential channels, but none completely mediate the relationship between
depression and property crime. To better direct intervention programs
for youths, these mechanisms should be established.
ABBREVIATIONS
ATT: Average Treatment Effect on the Treated
CES-D: Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression
PSM: Propensity Score Matching
WHO: World Health Organization
doi: 10.1111/ecin.12145
Online Early publication September 1, 2014
APPENDIX
TABLE A1
Descriptive Statistics by Depression Status
(1) (2)
Full
Full Sample
Variable Sample (Not-Depressed)
Years at Wave IV
26 years or younger (a) 0.157 0.165
(0.363) (0.371)
27 years 0.145 0.148
(0.352) (0.355)
28 years 0.180 0.179
(0.384) (0.384)
29 years 0.188 0.186
(0.391) (0.389)
30 years 0.185 0.181
(0.388) (0.385)
31 years 0.120 0.117
(0.325) (0.321)
32 years or older 0.026 0.025
(0.160) (0.155)
Male 0.468 0.478
(0.499) (0.500)
White (a) 0.636 0.643
(0.481) (0.479)
Black 0.228 0.227
(0.420) (0.419)
Race/ethnicity other 0.145 0.140
(0.353) (0.347)
Hispanic 0.159 0.153
(0.366) (0.360)
Born in the USA 0.925 0.927
(0.263) (0.261)
Only child 0.198 0.196
(0.399) (0.397)
Birthweight in 250 g 10.207 10.298
(5.932) (5.883)
Height (inches) 65.565 65.598
(7.453) (7.407)
Weight (pounds) 141.654 141.395
(34.830) (34.873)
Education
Less than high school (a) 0.079 0.072
(0.270) (0.258)
High school 0.162 0.156
(0.369) (0.363)
Some college or vocational training 0.442 0.440
(0.497) (0.497)
College degree 0.238 0.250
(0.426) (0.433)
Graduate or professional degree 0.078 0.082
(0.268) (0.275)
Employed 0.651 0.656
(0.477) (0.475)
Personal earnings 35242.9 36086.4
(44875.2) (46303.5)
Gut feeling in decision making Wave I 0.089 0.080
(0.285) (0.271)
Low chance to live to age 35 0.143 0.122
(0.350) (0.327)
Never married (a) 0.502 0.503
(0.500) (0.500)
Currently married 0.434 0.434
(0.496) (0.496)
Divorced 0.064 0.062
(0.244) (0.241)
Add Health picture vocabulary test score 95.940 96.505
(25.601) (25.620)
Religion
None, atheist, or agnostic (a) 0.181 0.180
(0.385) (0.384)
Protestant 0.291 0.296
(0.454) (0.456)
Catholic 0.218 0.218
(0.413) (0.413)
Other Christian 0.224 0.223
(0.417) (0.416)
Other 0.083 0.081
(0.276) (0.273)
Parents are married at Wave I 0.615 0.624
(0.487) (0.484)
Mother's education
Less than high school (a) 0.150 0.143
(0.357) (0.350)
High school or equivalent 0.312 0.314
(0.463) (0.464)
More than high school 0.439 0.450
(0.496) (0.498)
Biological father is present at Wave I 0.496 0.507
(0.500) (0.500)
Total HH income in Wave I
<40k (a) 0.379 0.371
(0.485) (0.483)
Between 40k and 80k 0.290 0.298
(0.454) (0.458)
>80k 0.091 0.095
(0.288) (0.293)
Biological father spent time in jail 0.146 0.141
(0.353) (0.348)
Ever been diagnosed with anxiety 0.117 0.108
(0.321) (0.310)
Ever been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD 0.049 0.047
(0.216) (0.212)
Wave IV ever drug 0.553 0.552
(0.497) (0.497)
Wave I alcohol in the past year 0.474 0.458
(0.499) (0.498)
Wave I ever marijuana 0.283 0.264
(0.450) (0.441)
Have an older sibling -- --
-- --
Parent favors myself -- --
-- --
Parent treats children equally (a) -- --
-- --
Parent favors my sibling -- --
-- --
-- --
Means of adolescent characteristics that may differ between siblings
Bad tempered 0.307 0.294
(0.462) (0.456)
ADHD 0.049 0.047
(0.216) (0.212)
Learning disability 0.119 0.112
(0.324) (0.316)
Breastfed 0.441 0.449
(0.497) (0.497)
Low birthweight 0.090 0.088
(0.286) (0.283)
N 15,584 13,971
(3) (4)
Full
Sample Sibling
Variable (Depressed) (Sample)
Years at Wave IV
26 years or younger (a) 0.086 0.147
(0.280) (0.355)
27 years 0.118 0.155
(0.323) (0.362)
28 years 0.183 0.196
(0.387) (0.397)
29 years 0.203 0.194
(0.403) (0.396)
30 years 0.224 0.171
(0.417) (0.377)
31 years 0.146 0.112
(0.354) (0.315)
32 years or older 0.040 0.025
(0.195) (0.155)
Male 0.378 0.484
(0.485) (0.500)
White (a) 0.574 0.660
(0.495) (0.474)
Black 0.244 0.201
(0.429) (0.401)
Race/ethnicity other 0.193 0.150
(0.395) (0.357)
Hispanic 0.211 0.144
(0.408) (0.351)
Born in the USA 0.913 0.929
(0.282) (0.257)
Only child 0.221 0.011
(0.415) (0.102)
Birthweight in 250 g 9.422 9.697
(6.288) (5.631)
Height (inches) 65.280 65.472
(7.834) (7.862)
Weight (pounds) 143.898 140.207
(34.382) (34.485)
Education
Less than high school (a) 0.146 0.078
(0.353) (0.268)
High school 0.221 0.170
(0.415) (0.376)
Some college or vocational training 0.456 0.414
(0.498) (0.493)
College degree 0.137 0.258
(0.344) (0.438)
Graduate or professional degree 0.040 0.080
(0.195) (0.271)
Employed 0.607 0.642
(0.489) (0.480)
Personal earnings 27720.6 34915.6
(28108.9) (40729.9)
Gut feeling in decision making Wave I 0.171 0.090
(0.376) (0.286)
Low chance to live to age 35 0.319 0.142
(0.466) (0.349)
Never married (a) 0.487 0.490
(0.500) (0.500)
Currently married 0.435 0.448
(0.496) (0.497)
Divorced 0.078 0.062
(0.268) (0.241)
Add Health picture vocabulary test score 91.042 95.566
(24.909) (24.423)
Religion
None, atheist, or agnostic (a) 0.187 0.176
(0.390) (0.381)
Protestant 0.252 0.305
(0.434) (0.461)
Catholic 0.225 0.223
(0.418) (0.416)
Other Christian 0.229 0.219
(0.420) (0.413)
Other 0.103 0.076
(0.304) (0.265)
Parents are married at Wave I 0.532 0.647
(0.499) (0.478)
Mother's education
Less than high school (a) 0.213 0.148
(0.409) (0.355)
High school or equivalent 0.292 0.325
(0.455) (0.469)
More than high school 0.339 0.436
(0.474) (0.496)
Biological father is present at Wave I 0.403 0.579
(0.491) (0.494)
Total HH income in Wave I
<40k (a) 0.446 0.388
(0.497) (0.487)
Between 40k and 80k 0.213 0.303
(0.410) (0.460)
>80k 0.063 0.094
(0.242) (0.292)
Biological father spent time in jail 0.185 0.142
(0.388) (0.349)
Ever been diagnosed with anxiety 0.193 0.109
(0.395) (0.312)
Ever been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD 0.068 0.045
(0.251) (0.208)
Wave IV ever drug 0.561 0.519
(0.496) (0.500)
Wave I alcohol in the past year 0.621 0.449
(0.485) (0.498)
Wave I ever marijuana 0.446 0.260
(0.497) (0.439)
Have an older sibling -- 0.705
-- (0.456)
Parent favors myself -- 0.215
-- (0.411)
Parent treats children equally (a) -- 0.737
-- (0.441)
Parent favors my sibling -- 0.058
-- (0.235)
-- 0.320
Means of adolescent characteristics that may differ between siblings
Bad tempered 0.431 0.320
(0.496) (0.467)
ADHD 0.068 0.045
(0.251) (0.208)
Learning disability 0.185 0.123
(0.388) (0.329)
Breastfed 0.370 0.447
(0.483) (0.497)
Low birthweight 0.105 0.198
(0.307) (0.399)
N 1,613 3,116
(5) (6)
Sibling
Sample Sibling
(Not- Sample
Variable Depressed) (Depressed)
Years at Wave IV
26 years or younger (a) 0.155 0.079
(0.362) (0.270)
27 years 0.158 0.134
(0.364) (0.341)
28 years 0.190 0.246
(0.392) (0.432)
29 years 0.198 0.164
(0.398) (0.371)
30 years 0.169 0.188
(0.375) (0.392)
31 years 0.107 0.152
(0.309) (0.360)
32 years or older 0.023 0.037
(0.151) (0.188)
Male 0.495 0.389
(0.500) (0.488)
White (a) 0.668 0.590
(0.471) (0.493)
Black 0.200 0.207
(0.400) (0.406)
Race/ethnicity other 0.143 0.213
(0.350) (0.410)
Hispanic 0.138 0.192
(0.345) (0.394)
Born in the USA 0.933 0.891
(0.250) (0.313)
Only child 0.010 0.018
(0.098) (0.134)
Birthweight in 250 g 9.739 9.336
(5.602) (5.875)
Height (inches) 65.515 65.113
(7.805) (8.330)
Weight (pounds) 139.822 143.472
(34.430) (34.828)
Education
Less than high school (a) 0.070 0.140
(0.256) (0.347)
High school 0.162 0.243
(0.368) (0.430)
Some college or vocational training 0.411 0.438
(0.492) (0.497)
College degree 0.271 0.146
(0.445) (0.354)
Graduate or professional degree 0.085 0.033
(0.280) (0.180)
Employed 0.646 0.605
(0.478) (0.490)
Personal earnings 35756.8 27583.2
(41304.8) (34525.6)
Gut feeling in decision making Wave I 0.079 0.179
(0.270) (0.384)
Low chance to live to age 35 0.125 0.292
(0.330) (0.455)
Never married (a) 0.495 0.453
(0.500) (0.499)
Currently married 0.445 0.471
(0.497) (0.500)
Divorced 0.060 0.076
(0.237) (0.265)
Add Health picture vocabulary test score 96.185 90.322
(24.361) (24.353)
Religion
None, atheist, or agnostic (a) 0.174 0.185
(0.380) (0.389)
Protestant 0.312 0.246
(0.464) (0.432)
Catholic 0.219 0.252
(0.414) (0.435)
Other Christian 0.220 0.210
(0.414) (0.408)
Other 0.073 0.100
(0.261) (0.301)
Parents are married at Wave I 0.657 0.565
(0.475) (0.497)
Mother's education
Less than high school (a) 0.137 0.240
(0.344) (0.428)
High school or equivalent 0.330 0.286
(0.470) (0.452)
More than high school 0.449 0.328
(0.498) (0.470)
Biological father is present at Wave I 0.590 0.492
(0.492) (0.501)
Total HH income in Wave I
<40k (a) 0.380 0.450
(0.486) (0.498)
Between 40k and 80k 0.310 0.243
(0.463) (0.430)
>80k 0.097 0.067
(0.296) (0.250)
Biological father spent time in jail 0.136 0.192
(0.343) (0.394)
Ever been diagnosed with anxiety 0.103 0.161
(0.305) (0.368)
Ever been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD 0.044 0.058
(0.205) (0.234)
Wave IV ever drug 0.515 0.550
(0.500) (0.498)
Wave I alcohol in the past year 0.432 0.590
(0.496) (0.493)
Wave I ever marijuana 0.244 0.395
(0.430) (0.490)
Have an older sibling 0.706 0.698
(0.456) (0.459)
Parent favors myself 0.199 0.349
(0.399) (0.478)
Parent treats children equally (a) 0.755 0.571
(0.430) (0.496)
Parent favors my sibling 0.055 0.086
(0.229) (0.282)
0.310 0.412
Means of adolescent characteristics that may differ between siblings
Bad tempered 0.310 0.412
(0.463) (0.493)
ADHD 0.044 0.058
(0.205) (0.234)
Learning disability 0.117 0.176
(0.322) (0.381)
Breastfed 0.454 0.381
(0.498) (0.486)
Low birthweight 0.196 0.211
(0.397) (0.409)
N 2,787 329
Note: Standard deviations are in parentheses.
(a) Refers to the omitted category in the regression models.
TABLE A2
Estimates of Depression on Various Child Characteristics
(1) (2)
OLS Sibling Fixed Effects
Variable Sample Sibling Sample
Child has learning disability 0.049 *** 0.009
(0.018) (0.052)
Child is bad tempered 0.042 *** 0.025
(0.011) (0.026)
Breastfed -0.026 * 0.027
(0.014) (0.051)
ADHD 0.031 0.024
(0.032) (0.069)
Low birthweight 0.008 0.033
(0.016) (0.041)
Male -0.040 *** -0.047
(0.013) (0.032)
N 3,116 3,116
Note: Standard errors, corrected for clustering at the school
level, are in parentheses. *, **, and *** indicate statistical
significance at the 10%, 5%, and 1% levels, respectively.
TABLE A3
Estimates of the Relationship between Adolescent Depression and
Adult Crime--Full Results from Panel E of Table 2
(1) (2)
Variable Property Violent
Depressed 0.035 *** 0.013
(0.009) (0.010)
Wave I crime 0.055 *** 0.028 ***
(0.005) (0.008)
Years at Wave IV
26 years or younger 0.041 *** -0.017
(0.013) (0.021)
27 years 0.025 ** -0.026
(0.012) (0.019)
28 years 0.019 -0.009
(0.011) (0.018)
29 years 0.014 0.003
(0.011) (0.017)
30 years 0.005 -0.012
(0.010) (0.016)
31 years 0.011 -0.007
(0.010) (0.018)
Male 0.049 *** 0.018 **
(0.007) (0.007)
Black 0.006 0.025 **
(0.008) (0.011)
Other race -0.003 0.018 **
(0.007) (0.008)
Hispanic -0.003 -0.003
(0.008) (0.014)
Born in USA 0.004 0.029 ***
(0.008) (0.008)
Only child 0.007 0.011
(0.006) (0.008)
Birthweight in 250 g -0.000 -0.002
(0.001) (0.001)
Height (inches) -0.001 -0.002 **
(0.001) (0.001)
Weight (pounds) 0.000 0.000
(0.000) (0.000)
Education
High school -0.007 -0.014
(0.012) (0.013)
Some college or vocational training 0.004 -0.018
(0.010) (0.012)
College degree -0.013 -0.023 *
(0.010) (0.014)
Graduate or professional degree -0.005 -0.025
(0.013) (0.016)
Employed 0.004 -0.009
(0.005) (0.006)
Log of personal earnings -0.002 * 0.000
(0.001) (0.001)
Relies on gut feeling in decision
making Wave I 0.014 0.021 **
(0.009) (0.010)
Believes low chance to live to age 35
at Wave I -0.003 0.009
(0.006) (0.009)
Currently married -0.033 *** 0.009
(0.004) (0.007)
Divorced -0.011 0.029 ***
(0.009) (0.010)
Standardized Add Health picture
vocabulary test score 0.001 ** -0.000
(0.000) (0.000)
Religion
Protestant -0.007 -0.021 **
(0.007) (0.009)
Catholic 0.001 -0.007
(0.008) (0.008)
Other Christian -0.012 * -0.008
(0.007) (0.008)
Other 0.008 0.010
(0.010) (0.010)
Parents are married at Wave I -0.004 -0.017 *
(0.007) (0.010)
Mother has a high school degree
of equivalent 0.001 0.022 **
(0.008) (0.010)
Mother has more schooling than
high school 0.006 0.020 *
(0.008) (0.010)
Biological father is present at Wave I 0.011 -0.006
Total HH income in Wave I (0.006) (0.009)
Between 40k and 80k -0.009 0.010
(0.006) (0.008)
>80k -0.013 0.005
(0.010) (0.012)
Biological father spent time in jail 0.023 *** 0.008
(0.008) (0.008)
Mean 0.075 0.133
N 15,467 15,464
(3) (4)
Selling
Variable Drugs Nondrug
Depressed 0.004 0.029 **
(0.005) (0.011)
Wave I crime 0.082 *** 0.052 ***
(0.013) (0.006)
Years at Wave IV
26 years or younger 0.026 ** 0.015
(0.013) (0.022)
27 years 0.024 ** -0.008
(0.011) (0.021)
28 years 0.024 ** 0.002
(0.011) (0.018)
29 years 0.014 0.006
(0.010) (0.018)
30 years 0.008 -0.015
(0.010) (0.017)
31 years 0.007 -0.011
(0.009) (0.017)
Male 0.030 *** 0.064' **
(0.005) (0.008)
Black 0.024 *** 0.027 **
(0.007) (0.012)
Other race -0.002 0.019 *
(0.005) (0.011)
Hispanic 0.002 0.002
(0.008) (0.014)
Born in USA 0.005 0.035 ***
(0.006) (0.012)
Only child 0.009 * 0.027 ***
(0.005) (0.010)
Birthweight in 250 g -0.000 -0.003 *
(0.001) (0.001)
Height (inches) 0.000 -0.003 ***
(0.001) (0.001)
Weight (pounds) 0.000 0.000
(0.000) (0.000)
Education
High school -0.003 -0.003
(0.009) (0.016)
Some college or vocational training -0.011 0.006
(0.008) (0.013)
College degree -0.027 *** -0.015
(0.008) (0.014)
Graduate or professional degree -0.020 ** -0.013
(0.010) (0.017)
Employed 0.005 -0.001
(0.004) (0.007)
Log of personal earnings -0.002 *** -0.001
(0.001) (0.001)
Relies on gut feeling in decision
making Wave I 0.018 *** 0.030 **
(0.006) (0.012)
Believes low chance to live to age 35
at Wave I 0.000 0.008
(0.005) (0.010)
Currently married -0.028 *** -0.023 ***
(0.003) (0.007)
Divorced -0.011 0.022 *
(0.009) (0.013)
Standardized Add Health picture
vocabulary test score 0.000 ** 0.000
(0.000) (0.000)
Religion
Protestant -0.014 ** -0.029 ***
(0.006) (0.011)
Catholic -0.005 -0.009
(0.006) (0.011)
Other Christian -0.018 *** -0.016
(0.005) (0.010)
Other -0.002 0.013
(0.007) (0.013)
Parents are married at Wave I 0.006 -0.017 *
(0.005) (0.010)
Mother has a high school degree
of equivalent -0.005 0.016
(0.006) (0.010)
Mother has more schooling than
high school 0.001 0.019 *
(0.006) (0.011)
Biological father is present at Wave I -0.007 0.001
Total HH income in Wave I (0.005) (0.009)
Between 40k and 80k -0.001 0.001
(0.004) (0.009)
>80k 0.011 -0.002
(0.007) (0.015)
Biological father spent time in jail 0.019 *** 0.031 ***
(0.006) (0.010)
Mean 0.042 0.204
N 15.494 15,504
Note: Standard errors, corrected for clustering at the school
level, are in parentheses.
*, **, and *** indicate statistical significance at the 10%, 5%,
and 1% levels, respectively
TABLE A4
Estimates of the Relationship between Adolescent Depression and
Adult Crime--Full Results from Panel F of Table 3
(1) (2) (3) (4)
Variable Property Violent Drug Nondrug
Depressed 0.058 * 0.025 -0.001 0.059
(0.034) (0.047) (0.031) (0.054)
Crime in Wave I 0.043 0.063 0.070 * 0.043
Years at Wave IV (0.031) (0.040) (0.036) (0.034)
26 years or younger 0.039 -0.063 0.018 -0.045
(0.061) (0.111) (0.039) (0.128)
27 years 0.008 -0.085 -0.022 -0.087
(0.060) (0.115) (0.037) (0.132)
28 years 0.025 -0.032 0.007 -0.011
(0.060) (0.097) (0.036) (0.115)
29 years -0.003 -0.005 -0.011 -0.045
(0.057) (0.108) (0.033) (0.119)
30 years 0.001 -0.014 -0.026 -0.020
(0.050) (0.098) (0.027) (0.111)
31 years 0.011 -0.012 0.006 -0.021
(0.062) (0.119) (0.041) (0.132)
Male 0.047 * 0.028 0.042 0.047
(0.024) (0.052) (0.028) (0.053)
Birthweight in 250 g 0.005 0.004 0.000 0.010
(0.006) (0.009) (0.005) (0.010)
Height (inches) -0.002 -0.002 0.001 -0.001
(0.004) (0.006) (0.004) (0.006)
Weight (pounds) 0.000 -0.000 -0.000 -0.000
Education (0.000) (0.001) (0.000) (0.001)
High school 0.015 -0.056 0.003 -0.027
(0.037) (0.055) (0.041) (0.057)
Some college or
vocational training -0.015 0.001 -0.004 -0.008
(0.038) (0.056) (0.043) (0.062)
College degree -0.006 -0.005 -0.018 -0.000
(0.044) (0.070) (0.042) (0.076)
Graduate or professional
degree -0.050 0.008 -0.015 -0.036
(0.058) (0.084) (0.049) (0.095)
Employed 0.000 -0.023 0.013 -0.008
(0.018) (0.033) (0.015) (0.032)
Log of personal earnings -0.003 0.008 -0.004 * 0.005
(0.004) (0.006) (0.002) (0.007)
Relies on gut feeling in
decision making Wave I 0.005 -0.041 0.037 -0.016
(0.045) (0.045) (0.025) (0.059)
Believes low chance to
live to age 35 at
Wave I 0.007 0.004 0.002 0.024
(0.025) (0.039) (0.018) (0.040)
Currently married -0.019 0.005 -0.028 -0.022
(0.020) (0.025) (0.022) (0.031)
Divorced -0.012 0.021 -0.028 0.028
(0.039) (0.053) (0.053) (0.066)
Have an older sibling 0.016 0.031 -0.004 0.037
(0.020) (0.027) (0.017) (0.031)
Parent favors myself -0.039 0.033 0.005 0.007
(0.028) (0.039) (0.026) (0.040)
Parent favors my sibling 0.035 0.100 0.030 0.124 *
(0.052) (0.062) (0.047) (0.069)
Mean 0.068 0.140 0.036 0.201
N 3,100 3,097 3,102 3,096
Note: Standard errors, corrected for clustering at the school
level, are in parenthesis.
*, **, and *** indicate statistical significance at the 10%, 5%,
and 1% levels, respectively.
TABLE A5
Estimates of the Relationship between Adolescent Depression and
Adult Crime with Cutoffs for "Mild" and "Severe" Depression
(1) (2) (3) (4)
Selling
Variable Property Violent Drugs Nondrug
Panel A: school fixed effects with full controls
Mildly depressed 0.035 *** 0.002 0.008 0.017
(0.012) (0.012) (0.008) (0.015)
Severely depressed 0.035 *** 0.026 * -0.001 0.044 **
(0.013) (0.015) (0.009) (0.017)
Mean 0.075 0.133 0.042 0.204
N 15,467 15,464 15,494 15,504
Panel B: family fixed effects with full controls
Mildly depressed 0.084 * 0.010 0.014 0.052
(0.046) (0.051) (0.038) (0.059)
Severely depressed 0.015 0.045 -0.029 0.068
(0.038) (0.074) (0.048) (0.083)
Mean 0.068 0.140 0.036 0.201
N 3,114 3,111 3,116 3.110
Note: Standard errors, corrected for clustering at the school
level, are in parentheses.
*, **. and *** indicate statistical significance at the 10%, 5%.
and 1% levels, respectively.
TABLE A6
Probit Estimates for the Probability of Depression from the
Propensity Score Matching Analysis
Variable Depressed
Male -0.205 ***
(0.028)
Black -0.063
(0.038)
Other race 0.122 ***
(0.044)
Hispanic 0.023
(0.044)
Born in USA 0.129 **
(0.056)
Only child 0.046
(0.036)
Birthweight in 250 g 0.006
(0.007)
Standardized Add Health picture vocabulary test score -0.012 ***
(0.001)
Religion
Protestant -0.144 ***
(0.043)
Catholic -0.103 **
(0.046)
Other Christian -0.095 **
(0.044)
Other 0.052
(0.056)
Parents are married at Wave I -0.009
(0.041)
Mother has a high school degree of equivalent -0.124 ***
(0.043)
Mother has more schooling than high school -0.155 ***
(0.043)
Biological father is present at Wave I -0.112 ***
(0.040)
Total HH income in Wave I
Between 40k and 80k -0.107 ***
(0.039)
>80k -0.100 *
(0.059)
Biological father spent time in jail 0.076 *
(0.039)
N 15,584
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D. MARK ANDERSON, RESUL CESUR and ERDAL TEKIN *
* The authors thank seminar participants at the University of
Connecticut and Lafayette College. This research uses data from Add
Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and
designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan
Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by
grant P01-HD3192I from Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of
Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23
other federal agencies and foundations. Special acknowledgment is due to
Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original
design. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is
available on the Add Health website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth).
No direct support was received from grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis.
Anderson: Assistant Professor, Department of Agricultural Economics
and Economics, Montana State University, P.O. Box 172920, Bozeman. MT
59717-2920. Phone 1-406-366-0921, Fax 1-406-994-4S38, E-mail
[email protected]
Cesur: Assistant Professor, Finance Department, School of Business,
University of Connecticut, 2100 Hillside Road Unit 1041, Storrs, CT
06269-1041. Phone 1-860-486-6315, Fax 1-860-486-0634, E-mail
[email protected]
Tekin: Professor, Department of Public Administration and Policy,
School of Public Affairs, American University, IZA, and NBER, 4400
Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington DC 20016-8070. Phone 1-202-885-6361,
Fax 1-202885-2347, E-mail
[email protected]
(1.) By 2020, the WHO predicts that depression will be the second
leading contributor to the global burden of disease (World Health
Organization 2001).
(2.) The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services outlines
their objectives in Healthy People 2020. Available at:
http://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/default.aspx.
(3.) In particular, more than 20% of all prisoners have a history
of serious mental health problems (Marcotte and Markowitz 2011) and from
50% to 75% of incarcerated adolescents have diagnosable mental illnesses
(Coalition for Juvenile Justice 2012).
(4.) See Marcotte and Markowitz (2011) for a detailed summary of
the literature on the relationship between depression and crime.
(5.) See http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/aus8009.pdf.
(6.) See Udry (2003) for a full description of the Add Health data.
(7.) Despite these advantages, the Add Health comes with the
limitations inherent to survey data, where one can only condition on
observable factors. In the absence of a randomized controlled design and
plausible instruments, we still need to rely on strong assumptions
associated with quasi-reduced form methods even with a rich dataset like
the Add Health.
(8.) There is a 19th question that asked respondents if they felt
whether "life was not worth living." While we do not use
information from this question because it is not asked in the standard
CES-D scale, it has been used by other researchers in constructing
measures of depression (see, e.g., Fletcher 2010). However, it must be
noted that our results are similar when we redefined our depression
measure by utilizing information from this question.
(9.) It should be noted that the measures of depression used in our
study do not come without limitations. Most importantly, these variables
indicate depressive symptoms and do not represent medical diagnoses. In
addition, as with any other survey, respondents may have answered
questions dishonestly or with error. However, survey administrators took
a number of steps to ensure data security and to minimize the potential
for interviewer or parental influence. For example, respondents were not
provided with printed questionnaires. Instead, all responses were
recorded on laptop computers. Furthermore, for sensitive topics such as
criminal behavior, respondents listened to pre-recorded questions
through earphones and entered their own responses.
(10.) Four items assessed positive symptoms and, therefore, are
reversed before calculating the scores. These positive symptoms include
how often the respondents (i) felt "happy," (ii) felt
"that you were just as good as other people," (iii) felt
"hopeful about the future," and (iv) "enjoyed life."
(11.) Mocan and Tekin (2005, 2006) show that the rates of criminal
activities reported in the Add Health, e.g., crime and illicit drug use,
are comparable to those in other national data sources.
(12.) Evaluating specific types of crimes is of interest because
previous research suggests mental health problems are more strongly
associated with certain offenses. For example, Ritakallio et al. (2006)
find that vandalism was the most typical offense committed among
depressed delinquent girls, while Silver, Felson, and Vaneseltine (2008)
illustrate that a history of mental health treatment is more strongly
associated with assaultive violence and sexual offenses than with other
types of crimes.
(13.) However, we may need a larger sample size to detect
significant differences between the depressed and nondepressed
individuals in Wave IV since crime drops sharply for both groups.
(14.) In the models that include sibling fixed effects, we also
control for birth order. Argys et al. (2006) illustrate that children
with older siblings are more likely to engage in risky behavior than
their firstborn counterparts.
(15.) We also regressed our depression indicator on a series of
characteristics that may differ between siblings. Each cell in Table A2
presents a separate correlation between depression and these variables.
Column (1) presents estimates from an OLS model based on the sibling
sample, while column (2) presents estimates from a family fixed effects
model based on the sibling sample. Column (1) indicates statistically
significant associations between depression and whether the respondent
had a learning disability, had bad temperament, was breastfed, and was
male. However, none of these associations are statistically significant
when we account for permanent differences between siblings using family
fixed effects. It is also important to note that the estimated
coefficients reported in column (2) are quite small in magnitude.
(16.) Probit and logit models yielded similar results.
(17.) We present results from unweighted regressions. Results are
similar when we use the sample weights provided by the Add Health. This
is not surprising given the large number of variables that we control
for in our regressions. The results from the weighted regressions are
available from the authors upon request.
(18.) The questions pertaining to anticipation of future survival
include: (i) when making decisions, do you usually go with your
"gut feeling" without thinking too much about the future
consequences of each alternative?; and (ii) what do you think are the
chances that you will live to age 35? The set of occupational indicators
includes the following: management, business, and financial operation
occupations; computer and mathematical occupations; architecture and
engineering, life, physical, and social science occupations; community
and social service occupations; legal occupations; education, training,
and library occupations; arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media
occupations; healthcare practitioners; support and technical
occupations; protective service occupations; food preparation and
serving related occupations; building and grounds cleaning and
maintenance occupations; personal care and service occupations; sales,
office, and administrative occupations; farming, fishing, and forestry
occupations; construction, maintenance, and repair occupations;
production occupations; and transportation and moving occupations.
(19.) One concern with the sibling fixed effects strategy is that
the estimates may reflect differences in parental investment rather than
depression per se. To address this issue, we used information from the
following Add Health question, "Think of all the things your
parents do for you and your sibling. Do you think that you or your
sibling receives more attention and love from your parents? Would you
say that your sibling receives [a lot more, a little more, the same
amount, a little less, a lot less]?" Specifically, we estimated the
sibling fixed effects models for only the sample of siblings who both
reported equal parental treatment. Under this alternative specification,
our estimates were qualitatively similar to those reported below. These
results are available from the authors upon request.
(20.) It should be noted that if depressive symptoms are measured
with error, then sibling fixed effects may aggravate the bias associated
with the measurement error. Also, those in the sibling sample who were
not surveyed during Wave IV are slightly less likely to be depressed at
Wave I but share similar Wave I criminal propensities with those
individuals who remained in the sample.
(21.) This condition is a necessary requirement of the Balancing
Hypothesis.
(22.) For more detailed discussions on matching algorithms, see
Anderson (2013), Caliendo and Kopeinig (2008), or Dehejia and Wahba
(2002).
(23.) For the sake of brevity, we do not present the coefficient
estimates for the other variables in our models. The results for these
controls are consistent with previous studies on the determinants of
crime (e.g., Currie and Tekin 2012; Mocan and Tekin 2005, 2010) and are
presented in Table A3 for the most comprehensive specifications.
(24.) However, these neighborhood- and community-level
characteristics may have independent and direct impacts on criminal
behavior.
(25.) Full results from the specification in Panel E are presented
in Table A3.
(26.) Waldinger, Vaillant, and Orav (2007) show that sibling
rivalries predict occurrences of major depression, while Nelson and
Martin (1985) report increased child abuse in families with twins.
(27.) Note that the mean incidence of property crime is 0.062 in
the not-depressed and 0.125 in the depressed sibling samples,
respectively. The effect sizes in this paper are in line with effect
sizes from other studies on the determinants of crime that use the Add
Health data. For example, Currie and Tekin (2012) find that child
maltreatment roughly doubles the probability an individual engages in
several types of crimes. Mocan and Tekin (2005) show that having access
to a gun at home increases the probability an individual engages in a
variety of crimes by roughly 30%. Fletcher and Wolfe (2009) document
that childhood ADHD increases the probability an individual engages in
crime as an adult by roughly 40-70%.
(28.) Full results from the specification in Panel F are presented
in Table A4.
(29.) Descriptive statistics for these variables are illustrated in
Table A1.
(30.) A potential caveat to these results is that the substance use
indicators may be endogenously determined. We also experimented with
controlling for adult depression. While our results were qualitatively
similar when controlling for a Wave IV measure of depression, we were
unable to rule out endogeneity due to a reverse causal relationship
between adult depression and adult criminality. These results are
available from the authors upon request.
(31.) Another interesting consideration is whether a nonlinear
relationship exists between youth depression and adult criminality. From
a policy perspective, this may help to identify whether more targeted
interventions among depressed youths would be beneficial. Table A5 shows
results where our measures of crime are regressed on two separate
depression indicators. The first indicator. Mildly Depressed, is equal
to 1 if the CES-D score is between 23 and 26 for males or 25 and 30 for
females, and is equal to 0 otherwise. The second indicator, Severely
Depressed, is equal to 1 if the CES-D score is greater than 26 for males
or 30 for females, and is equal to 0 otherwise. These cutoffs were
chosen so as to create two roughly equal depression categories for each
gender. Our results for the full sample with school fixed effects and
the full set of controls suggest important nonlinearities exist for
violent and nondrug crimes. "Severe depression" experienced as
a youth is associated with a 2.6 percentage-point increase in the
likelihood of committing a violent crime as an adult and a 4.4
percentage-point increase in the likelihood of committing a nondrug
crime as an adult. Our results for the sibling sample with family fixed
effects and the full set of controls tell a slightly different story.
"Mild depression" experienced as a youth is associated with an
8.4 percentage point increase in the likelihood of committing a property
crime as an adult.
(32.) Table A6 presents results from the probit model used in the
propensity score matching analysis. These estimates illustrate that
gender, race, cognitive ability, religion, socioeconomic status, and
family environment (e.g., whether the biological father was present in
the household and whether the biological father spent time in jail) are
all important correlates of youth depression.
(33.) We chose k = 3 for the k-nearest neighbor matching method.
The results for the within caliper matching method are based on a
maximum propensity score distance (i.e., the caliper) of 0.001. The
estimates changed little when we specified distances of 0.0001 and
0.00005. We also experimented with radius and kernel matching. These
results were similar to those shown above, were omitted for the sake of
brevity, and are available from the authors upon request.
(34.) See Table 82 in
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/cvus07.pdf.
TABLE 1
Descriptive Statistics
(1) (2) (3)
Full Full
Full Sample Sample
Variable Sample (Not Depressed) (Depressed)
Wave I
Property 0.294 0.280 0.412 ***
(0.456) (0.449) (0.492)
Violent 0.210 0.197 0.327 ***
(0.408) (0.398) (0.469)
Selling drugs 0.075 0.067 0.142 ***
(0.263) (0.250) (0.349)
Nondrug 0.394 0.376 0.550 ***
(0.489) (0.484) (0.498)
Wave IV
Property 0.075 0.071 0.109 ***
(0.264) (0.257) (0.311)
Violent 0.133 0.131 0.156 ***
(0.340) (0.337) (0.363)
Selling drugs 0.042 0.041 0.051 *
(0.200) (0.198) (0.220)
Nondrug 0.205 0.200 0.242 ***
(0.404) (0.400) (0.428)
Depressed 0.104 -- 1
(0.305) -- (0)
CES-D scale 12.389 10.456 29.129
(8.136) (5.824) (5.759)
N 15,584 13,971 1,613
(4) (5) (6)
Sibling Sibling
Sibling Sample Sample
Variable Sample (Not Depressed) (Depressed)
Wave I
Property 0.287 0.276 0.378 ***
(0.452) (0.447) (0.486)
Violent 0.199 0.188 0.294 ***
(0.399) (0.391) (0.456)
Selling drugs 0.067 0.062 0.116 ***
(0.251) (0.240) (0.320)
Nondrug 0.378 0.362 0.518 ***
(0.485) (0.481) (0.500)
Wave IV
Property 0.068 0.062 0.125 ***
(0.253) (0.241) (0.331)
Violent 0.141 0.137 0.168
(0.348) (0.344) (0.374)
Selling drugs 0.037 0.035 0.052
(0.188) (0.183) (0.222)
Nondrug 0.202 0.195 0.259 ***
(0.401) (0.396) (0.439)
Depressed 0.106 -- 1
(0.307) -- (0)
CES-D scale 12.572 10.685 28.558
(8.055) (5.907) (5.768)
N 3,116 2,787 329
Note: Standard deviations are in parentheses.
*, **, and *** indicate statistical significance at the 10%, 5%,
and 1% levels, respectively, for the difference between the means
in columns (2) and (3) and columns (5) and (6).
TABLE 2
Estimates of the Relationship between Adolescent Depression and
Adult Crime
(1) (2) (3) (4)
Selling
Variable Property Violent Drugs Nondrug
Panel A: OLS with no controls
Depressed 0.037 *** 0.025 ** 0.010 * 0.042 ***
(0.009) (0.010) (0.006) (0.011)
Mean 0.075 0.133 0.042 0.205
N 15,570 15,571 15,582 15.560
Panel B: OLS with basic controls
Depressed 0.047 *** 0.020 ** 0.013 ** 0.045 ***
(0.009) (0.010) (0.005) (0.011)
Mean 0.075 0.133 0.042 0.205
N 15.570 15,571 15.582 15.560
Panel C: OLS with basic controls + potential channels
Depressed 0.043 *** 0.015 0.007 0.037 ***
(0.009) (0.010) (0.005) (0.011)
Mean 0.075 0.133 0.042 0.205
N 15,570 15,571 15,582 15,560
Panel D: school fixed effects + basic controls + potential channels
Depressed 0.042 *** 0.015 0.008 0.036 ***
(0.009) (0.010) (0.005) (0.011)
Mean 0.075 0.133 0.042 0.205
N 15,570 15.571 15,582 15,560
Panel E: school fixed effects + basic controls + potential channels
+ lagged dependent variable
Depressed 0.035 *** 0.013 0.004 0.029 **
(0.009) (0.010) (0.005) (0.011)
Crime in Wave I 0.055 *** 0.028 *** 0.082 *** 0.052 ***
(0.005) (0.008) (0.013) (0.006)
Mean 0.075 0.133 0.042 0.204
N 15.467 15,464 15,494 15,504
Note: Standard errors, corrected for clustering at the school
level, are in parentheses.
*, **, and *** indicate statistical significance at the 10%, 5%,
and 1% levels, respectively. Control variables are listed in
Table A1.
TABLE 3
Estimates of the Relationship between Adolescent Depression and
Adult Crime-Sibling Sample
(1) (2) (3) (4)
Selling
Variable Property Violent Drugs Nondrug
Panel A: OLS with no controls
Depressed 0.063 *** 0.030 0.017 0.064 **
(0.019) (0.024) (0.013) (0.028)
Mean 0.068 0.140 0.036 0.201
N 3,114 3,111 3,116 3,110
Panel B: OLS with basic controls
Depressed 0.074 *** 0.026 0.018 0.068 **
(0.018) (0.024) (0.012) (0.028)
Mean 0.068 0.140 0.036 0.201
N 3,114 3,111 3,116 3,110
Panel C: OLS with basic controls + potential channels
Depressed 0.070 *** 0.020 0.011 0.060 **
(0.017) (0.024) (0.012) (0.027)
Mean 0.068 0.140 0.036 0.201
N 3,112 3,109 3,114 3.108
Panel D: OLS with basic controls + potential channels + any
sibling depressed
Depressed 0.074 *** 0.028 0.018 0.070 ***
(0.019) (0.024) (0.012) (0.028)
Any sibling depressed 0.012 0.010 0.019 0.012
(0.014) (0.020) (0.013) (0.021)
Mean 0.068 0.140 0.036 0.201
N 3,100 3,097 3,102 3,096
Panel E: family fixed effects + basic controls + potential channels
Depressed 0.059 * 0.029 0.000 0.063
(0.035) (0.047) (0.031) (0.053)
Mean 0.068 0.140 0.036 0.201
N 3,114 3,111 3.116 3,110
Panel F: family fixed effects + basic controls + potential channels
+ lagged dependent variable
Depressed 0.058 * 0.025 -0.001 0.059
(0.034) (0.047) (0.031) (0.054)
Crime in Wave I 0.043 0.063 0.070 * 0.043
(0.031) (0.040) (0.036) (0.034)
Mean 0.068 0.140 0.036 0.201
N 3,114 3,111 3,116 3,110
Note: Standard errors, corrected for clustering at the school
level, are in parentheses.
*, **, and *** indicate statistical significance at the 10%, 5%,
and 1% levels, respectively.
TABLE 4
Estimates of the Relationship between Adolescent Depression and Adult
Crime-Controlling for Comorbid Conditions
(1) (2) (3) (4)
Selling
Variable Property Violent Drugs Nondrug
Panel A: school fixed effects with full controls
and comorbidities
Depressed 0.038 *** 0.013 0.005 0.031 ***
(0.009) (0.010) (0.005) (0.011)
Mean 0.075 0.133 0.042 0.205
N 15.569 15.570 15,581 15,559
Panel B: family fixed effects with full controls and
comorbidities
Depressed 0.057 * 0.024 -0.006 0.058
(0.034) (0.046) (0.031) (0.054)
Mean 0.068 0.140 0.036 0.201
N 3,114 3,111 3.116 3.110
Note: Standard errors, corrected for clustering at the
school level, are in parentheses.
*, **, and *** indicate statistical significance at the 10%,
5%, and 1% levels, respectively. Control variables are listed
in Table Al.
TABLE 5
Estimates of the Relationship between Adolescent Depression and
Adult Crime by Gender
(1) (2) (3) (4)
Selling
Variable Property Violent Drugs Nondrug
Panel A: school fixed effects with full controls (male sample)
Depressed 0.041 *** 0.006 -0.013 0.023
(0.015) (0.018) (0.011) (0.020)
Mean 0.103 0.142 0.066 0.240
N 7.212 7,207 7,227 7,237
Panel B: school fixed effects with full controls (female sample)
Depressed 0.030 0.019 0.014 0.031 ***
(0.009) (0.012) (0.006) (0.012)
Mean 0.051 0.125 0.021 0.173
N 8,255 8,257 8,267 8,267
Note: Standard errors, corrected for clustering at the
school level, are in parentheses.
*, **, and *** indicate statistical significance at the 10%,
5%, and 1% levels, respectively. Control variables are listed
in Table Al.
TABLE 6
Estimates of the Relationship between Adolescent Depression and
Adult Crime--Propensity Score Matching Analysis
(1)
Property
Nearest k-Nearest Within
Variable Neighbor Neighbor Caliper
Depressed 0.031 *** 0.040 *** 0.031 ***
(0.011) (0.011) (0.012)
Mean 0.075 0.075 0.075
N 15,557 15,557 15,547
(2)
Violent
Nearest k-Nearest Within
Variable Neighbor Neighbor Caliper
Depressed 0.021 0.021 0.021
(0.015) (0.013) (0.013)
Mean 0.133 0.133 0.133
N 15.557 15,557 15,547
(3)
Selling Drugs
Nearest k-Nearest Within
Variable Neighbor Neighbor Caliper
Depressed 0.011 0.008 0.011
(0.008) (0.007) (0.009)
Mean 0.041 0.041 0.041
N 15,557 15.557 15,547
(4)
Nondrug
Nearest k-Nearest Within
Variable Neighbor Neighbor Caliper
Depressed 0.033 ** 0.039 ** 0.034 **
(0.016) (0.016) (0.017)
Mean 0.205 0.205 0.205
N 15,557 15,557 15.547
Note: Bootstrapped standard errors, based on 200 replications,
are in parentheses.
*, **, and *** indicate statistical significance at the 10%, 5%,
and 1% levels, respectively.