Citation

Wegman DH, Davis LK. Am. J. Ind. Med. 1999; 36(5): 579-583.

Affiliation

Department of Work Environment, University of Massachusetts Lowell, 01854, USA. David_Wegman@uml.edu

Copyright

(Copyright © 1999, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

10506740

Abstract

The National Research Council's report "Protecting Youth at Work" addresses the health and safety consequences of work by youth in the United States. The report finds that a higher proportion of U.S. youth work than in any other developed nation and that as much as 80% of youth will have worked during their high school years. The majority of adolescents are employed in the retail and service sectors. Positive aspects of this work include lessons in responsibility, punctuality, dealing with people, good money management, and gaining self-esteem, independence and new skills. On the negative side, however, students who work long hours are less likely to advance as far in school as other students, are more likely to smoke cigarettes and use illegal drugs, be involved in other deviant behavior, may get insufficient sleep and exercise, and may spend less time with their family. Working youth appear to have injury rates (4.9 per 100 FTE) almost twice that of adult workers (2.8 per 100 FTE). There is evidence that each year over 200,000 youth experience work injuries and at least 70 die. The report includes an extensive list of recommendations to safeguard the health and well-being of young workers: improved government regulations as well as their enforcement, better data collection and analysis to provide essential information on the distribution and consequences of youth employment, education of key actors such as employers, parents, teachers and the youth themselves, and research to fill critical knowledge gaps.

Language: en