School-year employment and academic performance of young adolescents

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study examines the relationship between school-year employment and academic performance of young adolescents under age 16. Ordinary least squares estimates show a significant positive relationship between modest hours of school-year employment and grade point average. However, the inclusion of individual fixed effects diminishes the relationship substantially, suggesting that much of the positive correlation can be explained by individual heterogeneity. This interpretation of results is supported by the absence of evidence that school-year work affects school engagement or future-orientedness, the usual mechanisms through which work is hypothesized to produce positive schooling spillovers.