The Consequences of Adolescent Romantic Involvement for College Enrollment

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Abstract

We use restricted access longitudinal data from Add Health to investigate how several dimensions of adolescent romantic involvement influence young women’s and men’s college enrollment patterns. We also explore two channels by which adolescent romantic involvement may influence college enrollment: educational expectations and high school grades. Our analyses show that adolescent romantic involvement can positively and negatively affect educational expectations, high school grade point average (GPA), and college enrollment, with the direction depending on the dimension of romantic involvement considered. In addition, our results highlight gender and racial/ethnic differences in the effects of adolescent romantic involvement on educational outcomes. For men, virtually all of the effects of adolescent romantic involvement on college enrollment operate via lower grades. However, our findings indicate a more complicated pattern of effects for women. Adolescent romantic involvement has some residual effects on women’s college enrollment, even after accounting for impact on educational expectations and grades.

Authors

• Stephanie Woodham Burge, University of Oklahoma

• Ann M. Beutel, University of Oklahoma