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Recent Scientific Accomplishments Apel’s primary research focus is the relationship between youth employment and antisocial behavior. Prior research has consistently found that adolescents who are employed for longer hours each week are more likely to be engaged in a variety of antisocial behaviors, including but not limited to substance use and delinquency. The focus of Apel’s efforts has been to untangle whether this positive correlation is causal or instead a selection artifact. His findings from a nationally representative sample demonstrate conclusively that this correlation is a product of the differential selection of high-risk youths into a pattern of “intensive?employment. In a series of collaborative papers using a variety of econometric techniques, he has found that when the selection problem is fully addressed, the correlation between youth employment and antisocial behavior disappears. In fact, in his most recent research using state child labor laws as instruments for hours of employment, he finds that the correlation is actually negative. Briefly, youths who increase their work involvement in response to a loosening of child labor restrictions at age 16 tend to decrease their involvement in delinquent behavior. In a second line of research, Apel is interested in the study of violent victimization. His research in this area has focused on three distinct populations—women, minorities, and adolescents. He is especially interested in how their patterns of victimization differ from other populations, as well as whether traditional theories are capable of accounting for their unique victimization experiences. Apel is currently a co-investigator of an R03 from NICHD (MPRC affiliate Shawn Bushway is the P.I.). In this research, he takes advantage of the fact that the federal child labor law governing the number of hours that young people may be employed each week expires at age 16 and is substituted by laws that vary from state to state. With his colleagues, he finds that increases in work involvement—attributed to change in state child labor law eligibility—significantly reduces involvement in delinquent behavior, contrary to virtually all prior research on the topic. Additionally Apel is the co-investigator on a two-year grant from the National Science Foundation (Shawn Bushway is the P.I.) that involves using state child labor and other laws as instrumental variables to explore the causal effect of various features of youth employment (e.g., hours, wages, job quality) on antisocial behavior, as well as assessing how the causal relationship between employment and antisocial behavior may be moderated by local labor market context. In future research, Apel will to broaden his focus to consider the multiple transitions that take place during middle and late adolescence, including the domains of employment, family, and schooling. His interest lies in exploring ways to develop causal inference concerning the effect of these transitions on behavior using non-experimental data. | ||||||||
Maryland Population Research Center
0124N Cole Student Activities Building (#162)
College Park, MD 20742
Phone: 301-405-6403
Fax: 301-405-5743