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36 Cato J. 89 (2016)
Young and out of Work: An Analysis of Teenage Summer Employment, 1972-2012

handle is hein.journals/catoj36 and id is 95 raw text is: YOUNG AND OUT OF WORK: AN ANALYSIS OF TEENAGE SUMMER EMPLOYMENT, 1972-2012 J. Wilson Mixon Jr. and E. Frank Stephenson For many teenagers, a summer job was a rite of passage. Beyond the earnings gained from summer employment, evidence suggests that summer work may have additional benefits, such as reducing participation in criminal activity (Heller 2014); reducing behavior such as drug or alcohol use, fighting, and damaging others' property (Sum, Trubskyy, and McHugh 2013); and improving subsequent aca- demic achievement (Leos-Urbel 2014). Moreover, positive relation- ships found between youth employment and fuiture labor market success (Ruhm 1995) and negative relationships reported between youth unemployment and earnings up to 10 years later (Mroz and Savage 2006), though not focused specifically on summer employ- ment, suggest that teenage labor market outcomes affect the fuiture. Over the past four decades, however, the percentage of teens with summer jobs has fallen. Figure 1 plots the July employment- population ratio for white male, black male, white female, and black female 16 to 19-year-olds over the period 1972-2012. We use employment in July as the measure of summer jobs because school- year timing varies. In many areas, school years run from September through June, while in others the school year runs from August through May. Hence, July is the only month that should not have Cato Joumnal, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Winter 2016). Copyright © Cato Institute. All rights reserved. J. Wilson Mixon Jr. is Dana Professor of Economics Emeritus and E. Frank Stephenson is Professor of Economics at Berry College.

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