The objective is to examine trajectories of marijuana use among African Americans and Puerto Ricans from late adolescence to adulthood, with attention paid towards work commitment, financial stability, drug use and violence. (N=816.) The chronic marijuana user trajectory group compared to the none or low, increasing, and/or moderate marijuana user trajectory group was associated with negative aspects of work commitment, financial stability, and the social environment. The chronic marijuana user group was similar to the increasing marijuana user group on work commitment and financial stability. Treating marijuana use in late adolescence may reduce difficulty in the assumption of adult roles. Since chronic marijuana users experienced the most adverse effects in each of the domains, they require more intense clinical intervention than moderate marijuana users.

No abstract

WHAT'S KNOWN ON THIS SUBJECT: There are a few longitudinal studies that suggest that attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in adolescence is associated with later psychiatric disorders, substance use disorders, and impaired work performance.WHAT THIS STUDY ADDS: Adolescent ADHD is associated with a variety of internal and external stresses in adulthood. Consequently, it is essential to focus intervention efforts on adolescents with ADHD to prevent or alleviate adult difficulties in functioning.abstract OBJECTIVE: There is a scarcity of longitudinal studies of adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) followed until adulthood. We studied the relationship between ADHD in adolescence and impaired general physical health, impaired general mental health, antisocial personality disorder, impaired work performance, and high financial stress in adulthood. METHODS:A prospective design incorporated 6 assessments of participants spanning mean ages from 14 to 37 years. Two baseline assessments were taken between ages 14 and 16 years, and 5 outcome assessments were taken at mean age 37 years. Participants were assessed with structured interviews and questionnaires. The participants were from a community sample of individuals initially drawn in 1975 and followed to a mean age of 37 years in 2009. RESULTS:The adjusted odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for ADHD in adolescence as related to internal stress in adulthood were 1.82 (95% CI = 1.01-3.25; P , .05) for impaired general physical health, 2.36 (95% CI = 1.23-4.51; P , .01) for impaired general mental health, and 3.28 (95% CI = 1.51-7.13; P , .01) for antisocial personality disorder. The adjusted odds ratios and 95% CIs for ADHD in adolescence as related to external stress were 2.46 (95% CI = 1.37-4.43; P , .01) for impaired work performance and 3.33 (95% CI = 1.70-6.55; P , .001) for high financial stress.CONCLUSIONS: Clinicians should focus on early diagnosis and treatment of adolescent ADHD because it is a major predictor of an array of physical, mental, work, and financial problems in adulthood. Pediatrics 2013;131:5-13

In the years since the Great Recession, social scientists have anticipated that economic recovery in the U.S., characterized by gains in employment and median household income, would augur a reversal of declining fertility trends. However, the expected post-recession rebound in fertility rates has yet to materialize. In this study, I propose an economic explanation for why fertility rates have continued to decline regardless of improvements in conventional economic indicators. I argue that ongoing structural changes in U.S. labor markets have prolonged the financial uncertainty that leads women and couples to delay or forego childbearing. Combining statistical and survey data with restricted use vital registration records, I examine how cyclical and structural changes in metropolitan-area labor markets were associated with changes in total fertility rates (TFR) across racial/ethnic groups from the early 1990s to the present day, with a particular focus on the period between 2006-2014. The findings suggest that changes in industry compositionspecifically, the loss of manufacturing and construction businesseshave a larger effect on TFR than changes in the unemployment rate for all racial/ethnic groups. Since structural changes in labor markets are more likely to be sustained over time, in contrast to unemployment rates which fluctuate with economic cycles, further reductions in unemployment are unlikely to reverse declining fertility trends.

Large-scale climate events can have enduring effects on population size and composition. Natural disasters affect population fertility through multiple mechanisms, including displacement, demand for children, and reproductive care access. Fertility effects, in turn, influence the size and composition of new birth cohorts, extending the reach of climate events across generations. We study these processes in New Orleans during the decade spanning Hurricane Katrina. We combine census data, ACS data, and vital statistics data to describe fertility in New Orleans and seven comparison cities. Following Katrina, displacement contributed to a 30% decline in birth cohort size. Black fertility fell, and remained 4% below expected values through 2010. By contrast, white fertility increased by 5%. The largest share of births now occurs to white women. These fertility differences—beyond migration-driven population change—generate additional pressure on the renewal of New Orleans as a city in which the black population is substantially smaller in the disaster’s wake.

U.S. labor markets have experienced transformative change over the past half century. Spurred on by global economic change, robotization, and the decline of labor unions, state labor markets have shifted away from an occupational regime dominated by the production of goods to one characterized by the provision of services. Prior studies have proposed that the deterioration of employment opportunities may be associated with the rise of substance use disorders and drug overdose deaths, yet no clear link between changes in labor market dynamics in the U.S. manufacturing sector and drug overdose deaths has been established. Using restricted-use vital registration records between 1999 and 2017 that comprise over 700,000 drug deaths, I test two questions: First, what is the association between manufacturing decline and drug and opioid overdose mortality rates? Second, how much of the increase in these drug-related outcomes can be predicted by manufacturing decline? The findings provide strong evidence that the restructuring of the U.S. labor market has played an important upstream role in the current drug crisis. Up to 92,000 overdose deaths for men and up to 44,000 overdose deaths for women are predicted by the decline of state-level manufacturing over this nearly two-decade period. These results persist in models that adjust for other social, economic, and policy trends changing at the same time. Critically, the findings signal the value of policy interventions that aim to reduce persistent economic precarity experienced by individuals and communities, especially the economic strain placed upon the middle class.

Substance use and substance use disorders (SUDs) have been linked with marital discord. Relatively little is known, however, about the antecedents of SUDs, the mediators of these factors over time, or their associations with the spousal/partner relationship among urban adults. A better understanding of the longitudinal pathways to marital conflict and to SUDs should help prevention and intervention programs target their precursors within the developmental period in which they occur. The present study, therefore, examined the longitudinal predictors of an unsupportive spousal/partner relationship and SUDs among a community sample of urban African American and Puerto Rican adults from East Harlem, NY. Participants (N = 816) completed structured questionnaires at five time waves, from adolescence to adulthood (mean ages = 14, 19, 24, 29, and 32 years). Structural equation modeling examined the effects of earlier environmental and social stressors and intrapersonal and interpersonal factors on later SUDs in adulthood. There was a good fit of the structural equation model (CFI = 0.91; RMSEA = 0.06; and SRMR = 0.06), which revealed three main pathways from adolescence to the spousal/partner relationship and SUDs in adulthood. One pathway linked a weak parent-adolescent attachment relationship with the participant's psychological symptoms in emerging adulthood (p < 0.01), which in turn were related to affiliation with deviant and drug-using peers, also in emerging adulthood (p < 0.001). Peer deviance and drug use were associated with the participant's substance use in young adulthood (p < 0.001), which predicted both an unsupportive spousal/partner relationship (p < 0.05) and SUDs (p < 0.001) later in adulthood. Other pathways highlighted the continuity of psychological symptoms as related to both substance use in young adulthood (p < 0.001) and an unsupportive spousal/partner relationship in adulthood (p < 0.001). Findings showed that the associations of both distal stressors and the parent-adolescent relationship with more proximal intra- and interpersonal problems predicted unsupportive spousal/partner relationships and SUDs among urban adults. Several aspects of the individual's life, at different developmental stages, provide opportunities for interventions to prevent or reduce unsupportive spousal/partner relationships and SUDs.

In the years since the Great Recession, social scientists have anticipated that economic recovery in the U.S., characterized by gains in employment and median household income, would augur a reversal of declining fertility trends. However, the expected post-recession rebound in fertility rates has yet to materialize. In this study, I propose an economic explanation for why fertility rates have continued to decline regardless of improvements in conventional economic indicators. I argue that ongoing structural changes in U.S. labor markets have prolonged the financial uncertainty that leads women and couples to delay or forego childbearing. Combining statistical and survey data with restricted use vital registration records, I examine how cyclical and structural changes in metropolitan-area labor markets were associated with changes in total fertility rates (TFR) across racial/ethnic groups from the early 1990s to the present day, with a particular focus on the period between 2006-2014. The findings suggest that changes in industry composition – specifically, the loss of manufacturing and construction businesses – have a larger effect on TFR than changes in the unemployment rate for all racial/ethnic groups. Since structural changes in labor markets are more likely to be sustained over time, in contrast to unemployment rates which fluctuate with economic cycles, further reductions in unemployment are unlikely to reverse declining fertility trends.