Department of Health Policy and Management, Korea University, Republic of Korea.
Department of Sociology, University of Colorado Denver, USA.
Soc Sci Med. 2020 Nov;265:113397. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113397. Epub 2020 Sep 26.
Despite the well-established link between juvenile delinquency and socioeconomic attainment in adulthood, less is known about whether engagement in delinquent behavior during adolescence shapes adult health outcomes. This study examines the association between juvenile delinquency and adult physical and mental health, and whether this association is confounded by unobserved family heterogeneity. Moreover, this study explores the potential underlying mechanisms through which juvenile delinquency shapes adult physical and mental health. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) 1994-1995 (Wave 1) and 2007-2008 (Wave 4), we adopted a sibling fixed effect approach to account for genetic factors, family environment, and childhood social contexts such as school and neighborhood effects. The conventional OLS results show that engagement in delinquent behavior during adolescence strongly predicts higher levels of Framingham cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk score and depressive symptoms in adulthood. Once we account for family-specific heterogeneity, however, the point estimates of the associations of delinquency with CVD risk score and depressive symptoms are attenuated by 33% and 45%, respectively. Despite this attenuation, the association of juvenile delinquency with adult health is robust: a one standard-deviation increase in juvenile delinquency is associated with approximately 8 and 6 percent of one standard-deviation increases in CVD risk and depressive symptoms, respectively. Our mediation analyses suggest that a combination of several mediating pathways jointly explain the association between juvenile delinquency with adult health. The most consistent and significant mediating pathways connecting juvenile delinquency to both physical and mental health included disruption in student-teacher relationship, smoking, criminal justice contact, and educational attainment. Moreover, while binge drinking explained part of the association between delinquency and CVD risk score, student-friend relationship partially mediated the association with depression.
尽管青少年犯罪与成年后社会经济地位之间存在着明确的联系，但对于青少年时期的犯罪行为是否会影响成年后的健康结果知之甚少。本研究考察了青少年犯罪与成年期生理和心理健康之间的关联，以及这种关联是否受到未观察到的家庭异质性的影响。此外，本研究还探讨了青少年犯罪影响成年期生理和心理健康的潜在机制。本研究使用了来自国家青少年健康纵向研究（Add Health）1994-1995 年（第 1 波）和 2007-2008 年（第 4 波）的数据，采用兄弟姐妹固定效应方法来解释遗传因素、家庭环境以及学校和邻里等童年社会环境的影响。传统的 OLS 结果表明，青少年时期的犯罪行为与成年期更高的弗雷明汉心血管疾病（CVD）风险评分和抑郁症状密切相关。然而，一旦我们考虑到家庭特有的异质性，犯罪行为与 CVD 风险评分和抑郁症状的关联的点估计值就会分别减弱 33%和 45%。尽管存在这种减弱，但青少年犯罪与成年健康之间的关联仍然稳健：青少年犯罪每增加一个标准差，与 CVD 风险和抑郁症状分别增加大约 8%和 6%的一个标准差相关。我们的中介分析表明，几种中介途径的组合共同解释了青少年犯罪与成年健康之间的关联。连接青少年犯罪与生理和心理健康的最一致和最重要的中介途径包括学生与教师关系的中断、吸烟、刑事司法接触和教育程度。此外，虽然狂饮解释了犯罪与 CVD 风险评分之间关联的一部分，但学生与朋友的关系部分解释了与抑郁之间的关联。
