...as shown in chart 1, the teen employment-population ratio in 2005 stood at 36.5 percent, well below the rates of the previous 35 years, including the low points associated with the recessions of 1981-82, 1991, and 2001. Although some of this change might be attributed to rising school enrollment, because teens in school are less likely to be employed (and also because they work fewer hours), CPS data show a decrease in teen employment even among those enrolled in high school. For instance, from the 1995-96 school year to the 2003-04 school year, employment rates of enrolled teens fell from 34.2 percent to 27.0 percent. (2) Given this observed shift in teens' allocation of time away from employment, how are teens spending these hours? Recent anecdotal discussions, both scholarly and in the popular press, suggest that teens in more highly educated and economically advantaged families are being steered away from paid employment toward activities that are expected to increase their likelihood of acceptance to, and success in, college. (3) To what extent is this story consistent with nationally representative data? What about time-use patterns and trends in hours worked for teens in families with less educated parents? Many of the activities teens find themselves in, by choice or default, can have important long-term consequences for their academic and employment success.

Academic research points to substantial differences in outcomes by adult educational attainment--the measure also used here to delineate a family's socioeconomic status. For instance, less educated adults experience lower rates of employment and marriage and higher rates of single motherhood. Moreover, the gaps between them and their more educated counterparts are widening. (4) Similarly, rates of teen nonmarital fertility are substantially higher in families with less educated parents. (5) These pieces of evidence lead one to suspect considerable variation in teens' time use as a function of parental education.

Using data from outgoing rotation groups of the CPS for the school years (September-May) 1995-96, 1999-2000, and 2003-04, this article briefly reviews trends in teen employment. Among the article's findings, the recently observed decline in teen employment appears most pronounced for those in the most highly educated families. Then, to answer the question of how teens are spending their time if they are not in paid employment, the article examines trends in teens' time use from 1975-76 to 2003-04, using data from Monitoring the Future (MTF), an annual survey of high school seniors. In addition, point-in-time data on teen time use from the 2003 and 2004 American Time Use Survey (ATUS) are analyzed. Although the three data sets examined are not (even collectively) rich enough to formally investigate the long-term value of different uses of time (for example, homework as opposed to paid work), together with the existing literature, they suggest some implications.

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Parental education as a "dividing line"

As the academic literature cited earlier intimates, parental education functions as an important "dividing line" in the United States. Not only do children growing up in families with more highly educated parents tend to have greater access to economic resources, but also, these parents tend to serve as in-house role models and usually have more extensive informational and social networks. (6) Delineating economic (dis)advantage or socioeconomic status by educational attainment rather than income has several advantages. First, education level provides a well-defined set of "cutoffs" that serve to stratify the population. In contrast, identifying groups such as the "middle class" in income data is fraught with difficulties. Second, the average return for a given level of education has been found to differ significantly by race or ethnicity, suggesting that income may be a less-than-satisfactory measure of socioeconomic status. (7) Third, from a practical standpoint, the ATUS, which is the basis for much of the analysis set forth herein, includes information on household income by broad interval only. More detailed income information is available in CPS data linked to the ATUS, but these data are collected 2 to 5 months earlier, and income is more subject to short-term change than parental educational attainment is. (8) In fact, it is precisely because income is more subject to short-term change that policy researchers are increasingly using adult (parental) education rather than income to demarcate economic disadvantage in causal analyses. (9)

Importantly, the level of parental education that demarcates socioeconomic disadvantage differs by family structure, principally as a consequence of the number of adults in the household. With two adults, there are two potential earners to support the household, as well as two "supervisors" to monitor children. (10) Thus, even if the education levels of parents in married-couple and single-parent families are the same, the single-parent family is at a greater socioeconomic disadvantage.

Trend data from the CPS and MTF

The trend data on teens' time use analyzed in this article are from two sources: the CPS, a monthly survey administered to approximately 60,000 eligible households (11) by the U.S. Census Bureau; and MTF, an annual survey of a representative sample of approximately 14,000 to 18,000 12th graders located in 125 to 140 public and private high schools throughout the United States. MTF is administered by the Institute of Survey Research at the University of Michigan. (12)

CPS sample. Data on teens aged 16 to 19 years are taken from three school-year (September-May) periods: 1995-96, 1999-2000, and 2003-04. (13) A school-year sample frame is used because what is principally of interest is how teens allocate their time when they must meet the demands of high school. (14) The teens are drawn from households in the outgoing rotation group of the CPS during the sample frame. Specifically, households are included in the CPS on a rotation schedule of 4 months in the survey, 8 months out of the survey, and then 4 months in the survey again. At the end of this 16 month period, the household is dropped from the sample. The individuals interviewed in the 4th and 16th months are collectively called the outgoing rotation groups. Each teen is included in the 9 month sample frame only once, for the household's 4th-or 16th-month outgoing interview.

The following additional restrictions are imposed on the sample: the teen lives in a household with at least one parent (this restriction captures information on custodial parents' education), the teen is single (not married or cohabiting), and the teen does not have a child. Sample sizes are reported at the bottom of table 1, and means of key characteristics for the 2003-04 sample are reported in appendix table A-1.

The majority of the analysis focuses on teens enrolled in high school during the school year, but broader figures on all teens are presented as well. A teen's employment is based on his or her work status during the week prior to the survey interview. For those employed, the number of hours worked is measured as usual hours worked for all jobs. Teens are divided into one of four education groups: high school graduate, no college; high school student; college student; and high school dropout (not enrolled in high school or college and did not receive a high school degree). For teens in married-couple families, parental education is measured as the educational attainment of the more educated parent. (15) Data are stratified separately for white non-Hispanics and minorities, the latter defined as individuals who describe themselves as at least partly black or African-American or of Hispanic ethnicity. (Although Asians and other racial groups are not examined separately, data on these groups are included in the totals listed in the tables.) All CPS findings are weighted.

MTF sample. The primary purpose of MTF is to gather information on illicit substance use by teens, but these data also contain useful information on teens' time use and how patterns have changed since the survey's inception in 1975-76. A multistage random sampling procedure is used to draw a nationally representative sample of high school seniors from approximately 135 public and private high schools. In sampled schools, all 12th graders present on the day the survey is administered are interviewed. (16) The survey is self-administered and students' identities remain anonymous.

The MTF collects information on whether teens participate in various activities on a weekly basis, along with categorical data on time spent at work (paid and unpaid combined) and on homework. Although these data do not provide information on the precise number of hours per week spent performing each activity, they are indicative of changing time use over time. MTF data are available for each school year from 1975-76 through 200304. This article reports figures for the first and last years only. Given the way the MTF data are collected, data are available only for high school seniors across the period cited; therefore, the survey fails to capture both younger and older teens, as well as teens who are no longer attending high school, all of whom are captured in the CPS and ATUS. The MTF data are useful nonetheless, in that they provide a consistent cohort of teens and a time trend for comparative purposes.

All seniors surveyed in the MTF complete a core questionnaire. In addition, seniors complete 1 of 6 different forms on separate topics. ]he analysis presented in this article focuses on time-use activity questions asked in Form 2; thus, one-sixth of the full MTF sample provides the responses reported herein. Notably, questions on time use mention activities such as television viewing and working around the house, but fail to mention activities such as playing video games. Computer use is a recent addition to the survey and, as such, cannot be examined with respect to trends over time. The sample restrictions applied to these data are the same as those for the CPS, and all MTF results are weighted. Sample sizes for the MTF analysis are reported at the bottom of table 4.

Recent trends in teen employment rates: CPS. Table 1 provides detailed CPS information about teens' employment patterns for the school years 1995-96, 1999-2000, and 2003-04. Previous studies point out that teens in less advantaged households are much less likely to be employed, a finding also identified in table 1 for teens in single-parent families. (17) For instance, in 2003-04, employment rates were as low as 18 percent for teens living with a single parent with no high school degree, but rose steadily to range from 26 percent to 32 percent for teens living with a single parent with a high school education, some college, or a 4-year college degree.

A similar pattern is found for teens in married-couple families, although for this group, the relationship between parental education and teen employment resembles a hill. For instance, in 2003-04, teens in the least educated married-couple families had an average employment rate of 30 percent, and those with a parent who completed high school or some college had an average employment rate of 37 percent to 40 percent, but the rate stood at just 35 percent for those with a college-educated parent and was as low as 29 percent for teens with the most highly educated parents. This hill pattern also can be seen for teens in married-couple families for the years 1995-96 and 1999-2000.

Table 1 further documents striking trends in teen employment by parental education. As shown in the table,...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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