Working kids have bad health behaviors

U.S. researchers found fifth-graders who said they work — usually a few hours a week — had a higher risk of bad health behaviors.

Those who said they had a job were 2.2 times more likely to use tobacco, 1.7 more times to drink alcohol and 3.1 times more likely to smoke marijuana than their peers who said they did not have jobs.

The Rand Corp. study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, interviewed 5,147 fifth-grade students from three cities — Birmingham, Los Angeles and Houston. Twenty-one percent of the fifth graders said they had a job — usually yard work, babysitting or cleaning.

The study authors suggested one reason for the findings may be that fifth-graders who work might have more unsupervised time in which to engage in delinquent behavior and drug use.

A few studies among older youth have found that the degree to which parents monitor their children’s behavior tends to lessen when their kids start working, study lead author Rajeev Ramchand said in a statement.

The study also looked at how many of the fifth-graders acknowledged delinquent behavior in the last month, such as using alcohol — 4 percent — or marijuana at 1 percent, being in a fight at 52 percent or running away from home at 3 percent.