The Economic Determinants of Truancy

Truancy is often seen as irrational behaviour on the part of school ageyouth. This paper takes the opposite view and models truancy as thesolution to a time allocation problem in which youths derive currentreturns from activities that reduce time spent at school. The model isestimated using a US panel dataset, the National Longitudinal Survey ofYouth 1979, and the estimation allows for the possible endogeneity ofreturns from these competing activities. The results show that truancy isa function of the estimated economic returns from work, crime andschool.[...]