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To address these questions, this study uses four data sets; three birth cohorts (1942, 1945, and 1949) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Men in these samples served during different historical periods from the beginning of the Vietnam War to the early period of the all-volunteer force. Statistical methods were used to account for potential differences in selection and the presence of unobserved heterogeneity. Results suggest that there is an important influence of military service on later criminal behavior, but the specific direction of the effect depends on the historical period in which service occurred. In particular, serving in the military during the Vietnam era was related to reduced offending, and service during the volunteer era was related to increased offending. These results were significant even after controlling for race, education, socioeconomic status, age, and prior criminal behavior patterns.

The analyses revealed a variety of differences in locus of control development and criminal involvement for men and women, whites and blacks. The findings lead to the general conclusion that the social origins of locus of control follow a different path for African Americans than for whites, and different still across categories of gender. The empirical findings suggest that African American men were particularly disheartened. The findings also suggest that it would be promising for future research to explore the "self-reliant social psychology" surrounding locus of control development of African Americans.

The components of the structural model include the reservation costs and the costs of market-produced child-care services. The reservation costs, derived in the study by relying on the duality theorems, are used to estimate the effects of household-productivity on labor force participation. These price factors that are related to market-produced child-care are used to estimate the effects of subsidization on labor force participation, independent of other factors. The study group, consisting of 1906 young heads of households, between fourteen and twenty-two years of ages, was selected from the Youth Cohort of the National Longitudinal Surveys of Labor Market Experience (NLS-Y).

The findings reveal the presence of scale economies in the head of the household's production of child-care services. Higher reservation costs, reflecting higher estimates of household-productivity, lower the household's dollar-expenditures on market-produced child-care services. Among females, but not male youths, higher reservation costs also lower the labor force participation rate.

For illustration, the minimum subsidy requirement associated with a ten percentage point increase in the female youths' labor force participation rate is calculated. Higher reservation costs increase the minimum subsidy requirement.

The second essay asks whether the effect of father presence varies by maternal age in two adolescent outcomes, math achievement scores and early cigarette smoking. The increased incidence of first births among women age 30 or over suggests study of this population as researchers have investigated births to younger women. Positive effects of father presence are found for a range of child and adolescent outcomes among children at all birth timings, but theories of parenting and empirical differences in older and younger mothers suggest that the father presence effect may vary by maternal age. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 Cohort, I find that the effect of father presence increases with maternal age for both math achievement and deferred smoking. The change is attributable to observable parental characteristics that are correlated with maternal age rather than a pure effect of maternal age.

Previous research has shown the rate of premarital births to be higher among Latinas relative to White women. However, once distinctions are made by country of origin and nativity, I find that controlling for social background characteristics, second- or greater generation Latinas have increased hazards of premarital conception. Foreign-born Mexican women demonstrate a higher risk of first fertile premarital conception relative to white women after controlling for cohabitation. While previous research has found a lower likelihood of legitimation subsequent to a premarital pregnancy among Latinas, I find that only non-Mexican Latinas who are born in the United States (primarily Puerto Rican women) have significantly lower odds of legitimation relative to White women. All other Latinas have legitimation rates that are indistinguishable from those of White women.

The assumption of self-interest is particularly ill-suited for the study of redistributive politics. Preferences for redistribution may be influenced by values and beliefs about distributive justice as well as by self-interest. People may prefer more redistribution to the poor if they believe that poverty is caused by circumstances beyond individual control. Alternatively, the effect of these beliefs on redistributive preferences may be spurious if they are correlated with income, and self-interest is not properly controlled for. They may also measure incentive cost concerns. In Chapter 1, using survey data from the 1998 Gallup Poll Social Audit, I find that self-interest and incentive costs concerns cannot explain the effect of these beliefs on redistributive preferences.

I then report three studies designed to investigate the effects of economic experiences and institutions on preferences and behavior. In Chapter II I investigate how beliefs about the effects of effort, luck, and opportunity on income are updated. I model how people may update their beliefs based on comparisons of their actual earnings with expected income. I test the model using the National Longitudinal Surveys. In Chapter III I conduct an experimental test of the effect of minor differences in lottery procedures that which should have no effect according to expected utility theory on bidding behavior. In Chapter IV I investigate the effect of competition among players who bargain over the division of a sum of money on the inequality of the outcome. In these three chapters I find that beliefs about justice may be shaped by poor earnings relative to others, that procedural manipulations of the degree of involvement in income generating procedures may have significant effects on behavior, and that competition may undermine fair behavior.

Using data from the 1994 wave of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), the study focused on 291 mothers and their 5 to 8 year-old children. Descriptive analysis, zero-order correlations, multiple regression analyses, t-tests, and chi-square analyses were used for data description and analysis. A structural equation model (SEM) was used to test the conceptual model for this study.

Consistent with Bronfenbrenner's ecological model, the study shows that the children develop in the relationships within various kinds of environments such as the child's family, neighborhood, and child care setting. Maternal psychological well-being was affected by the mother's residence with both parents until her 18th birthday and her perception of neighborhood problems. The results of this study were also consistent with Belsky's model of the determinants of parenting. The quality of the home environment that mothers provided for their children was influenced by multiple factors, such as child characteristics, maternal characteristics, and contextual factors. Academically successful children from low-income families had grandmothers who were more educated and mothers with higher intelligence scores. Their mothers provided a more supportive home environment. Successful children in terms of behavioral adjustment tended to have heavier birth weights, mothers with higher level of psychological well-being, and better quality home environments.

This dissertation investigates the economic benefits and costs of available nontraditional work options and their effects on parental involvement with children. Using a sample of mothers and children between the ages of 10 and 14 from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth panel study for the years 1994 and 1996, this study tests cross-sectional and lagged models of the determinants of parenting.

The resulting descriptive analyses show that, with the exception of flextime, nontraditional work arrangements carry serious economic consequences. Multivariate models demonstrate that the only work arrangement that consistently increases parental involvement is mothers' part-time work, though positive effects partly depend on the presence of a spouse. On the other hand, fathers' part-time work has both positive and negative effects. "Family friendly" policies, such as flextime, do not significantly impact parenting, while flexplace produces mixed effects. Shift work, despite being a reasonable child care strategy, negatively affects parent-child relationships. Mothers' temporary work, if hired by a company directly, negatively influences time and activities with children, while temporary agency work and contracting have mixed effects.

Given the economic costs and the mixed effects on parenting, nontraditional work, in its current form, is a risky solution for parents. Reducing work time is a strategy that helps some parents who can afford the economic tradeoffs. Developing an effective solution for all workers will require workplaces and government policies to go beyond "family friendly" and rethink the organization of work and how working time can be altered to incorporate the dual needs of business and families.

The second essay models how screening workers through social networks impacts labor mobility in markets with adverse selection. When there is asymmetric information in labor markets, worker mobility is constrained by adverse election in the market for experienced workers. However, if workers can acquire references through their social networks then they can move more easily between jobs. In this chapter I develop a simple labor market model in which workers can learn the productivity of other workers through social interaction. I show that networks increase wages and mobility of high-productivity experienced workers; however, networks discourage workers from accepting jobs outside their job-contact network, because of adverse selection.

The third essay in this dissertation examines the importance of social networks in labor markets when work is produced jointly. Most employers cite engage in work together. In this essay, I explain why it might be rational for firms to hire through social networks even when worker skill is observed perfectly, if these workers are better able to do joint work with the firm

The second chapter analyzes the effects of welfare reform on maternal monitoring and children outcomes in households headed by low educated single mothers. Using data from NLSY79, I find that welfare waivers significantly increased the labor force participation of this group. However, this did not translate into decreased activities shared with children. Additionally, mothers whose employment decisions are affected by welfare reform are both more likely to use certain disciplinary measures and to praise their kids. There are no general harmful effects of welfare reform on children's cognitive ability, while there is a marked decrease in behavioral problems, especially for girls and children older than 6.