School Dissatisfaction and Risky Behavior of Adolescents

1. Colloque International Le bien-être dans l’éducation Paris, 2-4 octobre 2017 School Dissatisfactionand Risky Behavior of Adolescents Louis Lévy-Garboua*, Youenn Lohéac* and Bertrand Fayolle * University of Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne and Paris School of Economics louis.levy-garboua@univ-paris1.fr

2. Introduction • School dissatisfaction: • Important component of the subjective well-being of adolescents • A new interpretation of “satisfaction”as post-decisional preference legitimates the use of school dissatisfaction as causal link between school surprises and behavioral change. • Since the normative expectation of students’ behavior is that they receive education (in a broad sense of what parents and educators define as an investment in human capital), repeated bad school surprises may lead to human disinvestments, i.e. deviations from the educational norm commonly described as risky behavior. • Risky behavior: • While human investments (education) imply current costs (effort, forgone earnings) and future benefits (better job, health,…), human disinvestments provide current benefits (pleasant experiences out of school) but deferred losses or sanction. • Absenteeism, substance use, unprotected sex, violent behavior, illegal behavior, suicide attempts

3. Satisfaction as a predictor of risky behavior • Psychological studies: life dissatisfaction  good predictor of risky behavior by adolescents • Satisfaction judgment(Lévy-Garboua and Montmarquette,2004): • post-decisional preference for prior choice over available alternatives • School dissatisfaction manifests theintention to deviate from current educational norm in the near future • If risky behavior  substitute for education • Then school dissatisfaction  more precise predictor of risky behavior than life satisfaction • The latent variable for school satisfaction is captured by : • S = 1 if S* ≥ 0 • S = 0 if S* < 0

4. Dynamic model of behavioral change at school (1) • Let S* designate thelatent decision variableof adolescent which conditions his education and risky behavior within the schooling period: • S* ordinal variable, whose sign describes adherence to, or deviation from, the educational norm. • Parameters in this equation are revisable expectations conditional on personal experience and other information. • Surprises experienced by adolescent at schoolmay lead to revised expectations and a change of behavior within the boundaries of schooling: e > 0.

5. Dynamic model of behavioral change at school(2) • Schooling is divided in sub-periods (l ≤ t ≤ n) : • At each sub-period (t), decision setting is: • (A monotonic transformation of) S*(t) is a random variable from a normal distribution with unknown values of mean and precision. Schooling period Work Time 1 2 t n t S*(t) S*t-1 S*t

6. Dynamic model of behavioral change at school (3) • Assuming a Bayesian revision of probability distribution • Behavior converges to a stable habit (long run), and behavioral change is caused by experienced surprises(with for the tth experience) in the short run. • By iteration: • The adolescent is driven by a succession of bad experiences to breach the educational norm and indulge in risky behavior.

7. Data and strategy • Add Health: health and behavior of young Americans • In-Home I (1995): 20745 + parents  Education and Satisfaction • In-Home II (1996): 14738  10 groups of risky behavior • School satisfaction explained by • Prior choice of schooling: individual background variables • Sum of surprises: gap between school level and normative expectation • Risky behavior at t depends on school (dis)satisfaction at t-1 One year … Choice of Schooling (S*0) satisfaction with school: intention to follow the norm S*(t) Risky behavior (S*t+1)→St+1

8. Education and satisfaction • Education: • 6 levels observed: Ordered Probit • Standard results (not shown) • Education gap: • Predicted school level (normative expectation) • Difference between observed education level and predicted education level • School satisfaction: 66.40% (estimated by Probit) –Table 1 – • Education gap: Positive and significant effect • School dummies: effect of specific school environment • Other satisfactions: specific personality and non-school environment

9. School satisfaction equation Table 1: Probit (Add Health, In-Home I)

10. Risky behavior (1) • 10 risky behavior: • 76% : at least one behavior • 30% (absenteeism); 32% (smoke cigarette); 54% (illegal behavior) • Correlation matrix (excluding unprotected sex): • First group: cigarette, alcohol, marijuana • Second group: marijuana, other drugs, selling drugs • Third group: selling drugs, illegal or violent behavior • No correlation: absenteeism, stealing, suicide attempts • Incidence of school satisfaction (t) on adoption of risky behavior (t+1), table 2: • Dissatisfied at (t) take more risky behavior at (t+1) than satisfied • 24% of ‘‘no absent-dissatisfied’’ at (t) are absent at (t+1) • 17.3% of ‘‘no absent-satisfied’’ at (t) are absent at (t+1)

11. Effect of school satisfaction and risky behavior in year t on the adoption of risky behavior in year t+1

12. Risky behavior (2) • Problem of causality and endogeneity solved • by taking school satisfaction from the first In-Home survey and risky behavior from the second, one year later; • school satisfaction contains information about current school surprise that is unique, and in no other variable. • School Satisfaction • Predicts risky behavior in all domains one year ahead; • Dampening effect of surprise with the duration of habit • Habit • Addiction effect (coef. > 1): cigarette, marijuana, other drugs, drug selling, and suicide attempt; • Learning effect (coef. < 1): unprotected sex; • Independence (coef. = 1): absenteeism, stealing, illegal or violent behavior.

13. Coefficients (satisfaction and habit) of behavioral equations Probit (Add Health, In-Home II) Hubert/White/Sandwich Robust standard error in parentheses

14. Conclusion School dissatisfaction: • Expresses an intention to deviate from the educational norm and adopt risky behavior. • Is caused by bad school surprises like a school failure, many of which are unobservable. • Causes the adoption of risky behavior (significantly increases the probability of 9 types out of 10, exc. alcohol drinking), holding past behavior constant. All risky behavior: • Explained by a dynamic model of behavioral change; • Some addictive

15. References • Lévy-Garboua, L., Lohéac, Y., & B. Fayolle (2006). Preference formation, school dissatisfaction, and risky behavior of adolescents, Journal of Economic Psychology 27, 165-183. • Lévy-Garboua, L., & Montmarquette, C. (2004). Reported job satisfaction: What does it mean? Journal of Socio-Economics, 33 (2), 135-151.

16. Thank you for your attention

17. Appendix: A static model of human investment/disinvestment (1) • Adolescentsdevote time and effort to education in relation with expected returns (life = 1 period of school + T periods of work) • School time (1 period) shared between: • Education: e , i.e. effective investment; • Risky behavior: l, i.e. disinvestment; • with e + l = 1 and 0 ≤ e, l ≤ 1 (1) • Normative expectation of adolescent behavior: l* = 0 (2) • Effective behavior (maximization of expected present value of school s.t. (1)): • (3) • with y, expected permanent earnings; i, positive discount rate; and v(l), utility derived from risky behavior.

18. Appendix: A static model of human investment/disinvestment (2) • Future earnings produced by • initial stock of human capital (h), • investment in education (r > 0, expected return to education), • disinvestment in risky behavior (a > 0, expected rate of depreciation) (4) • The maximization problem is: • (5) • s.t. 0 ≤ l ≤ 1 • Adolescent follows the educational norm (l*=0) if and only if:(6)

19. Correlation between nine types of risky behavior at time t+1 (Add Health, In-Home II)