A recent study in Justice Quarterly showed that teens who see no future are less likely to invest in one. University of Texas at Dallas researcher, Alex Piquero, found that youth who believe that they will die early commit more crimes than those who believe that they will live to an old age. 

The seven-year study examined attitudes of young offenders, including 700 in Philadelphia. Piquero began the study by asking teens around 16 years old how long they thought they would live. Some replied a few more years. Other planned on living for nearly a century. Piquero returned to teens several years later when they were in their early 20s to review how they had lived out the years that had passed. He found that teens who expected to live longer better controlled their impulses than those who didn't care about their life's longevity.

While the results of the study may seem obvious, there are few studies that link death-age prediction to reckless behavior with negative long-term consequences in the context of criminology. The results underline the importance of emphasizing an achievable long-term vision to teens, according to Piquero. 

A 2009 University of Minnesota study found that teens who believed that they wouldn't live past 35 increased their likelihood of death by engaging in risky behavior, one of the first studies that countered the idea that teens took risks because of a feeling of immortality. In the study, 15 percent of U.S. teens believed that they had a 50-50 change of reaching the age of 35. The rate was even higher for Asian, Black, Latino and Native American teens than for white teens (15 percent, 26 percent, 21 percent, 29 percent and 10 percent, respectively).

President Obama recently launched an initiative called My Brother's Keeper to address challenges disproportionately faced by young men of color and provide more opportunities for the future.