Truancy is often seen as irrational behaviour on the part of school age youth. This paper takes the opposite view and models truancy as the solution to a time allocation problem in which youths derive current returns from activities that reduce time spent at school. The model is estimated using a US panel dataset, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, and the estimation allows for the possible endogeneity of returns from these competing activities. The results show that truancy is a function of the estimated economic returns from work, crime and school.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE in its series CASE Papers with number
61.