Parents' Nonstandard Work Schedules and Adolescents' Socio-Emotional Outcomes

Wen-Jui Han, Columbia University
Jane Waldfogel, Columbia University

The main focus of this paper is to assess whether the effects of parental employment on adolescents’ socio-emotional outcomes (i.e., depression, sexual behavior, substance use, and defiant behavior) differ by parental work schedules. This paper uses data from a large national sample of children in the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-Child Supplement (NLSY79-CS). The NLSY79-CS is well suited for this analysis because, in addition to collecting detailed information on family demographic background and home environment, it also contains information on various dimensions of parental work schedules (e.g., working at evenings, nights, or rotating shifts).