Other research found that increased time spent on nonacademic activities outside of school increased a student's likelihood of dropping out of school. For example, the more hours students worked during the sophomore year of high school, the more likely they were to drop out of school. While the effects of working during high school were generally negative, there were some aspects of work that had positive effects on student outcomes. In particular, working to save money for college had noticeable positive effects on the students' academic and social outcomes, especially actual college attendance. The links between adolescent parenting and dropping out are just as tangled as those between employment and dropping out.
Poor women are more likely both to bear children at a young age and to drop out.
Although data on the sequence of childbirth and dropping out have been lacking, it has been common to assume that young women become sexually active, experience childbirth, and then drop out of school, in that order. But, in fact, there are several things going on at once, and cause and consequence are hard to separate. At the same time that young women are becoming sexually active, they may be engaged in other problem behaviors as well, some of them in school. It may prove difficult to determine whether poor school performance leads to sexual activity or whether sexual activity leads to poor school performance and then, in both cases, to dropping out. In fact, the most recent, best evidence on the timing of a first birth and high school completion suggests that having a baby while in high school does not necessarily mean that the young women will not finish school.