Investigates how parenting influences delinquency in adolescents, suggesting parental engagement can mitigate negative effects.
Adolescent delinquency strongly predicts later-life outcomes, yet little is known about how parents interact with children and their social environment in shaping delinquency. We estimate a simultaneous equilibrium model of parenting and delinquency that distinguishes between direct technological effects of the social environment and feedback effects arising from parental responses, with the family multiplier capturing the strength of feedback. Parental control reduces delinquency, yet parents reduce control when perceived delinquency rises, reinforcing peer influences. Feedback effects amplify delinquency disparities arising from children’s genetic risk-taking endowments by one-quarter. Incentivizing parental engagement could change baseline delinquency substantially and transform reinforcement into mitigation.
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Chan et al. (2026) studied this question.
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