This study was novel in that it allowed for an assessment of the societal burden of persistent conduct problems across early- to mid-adulthood via administrative records, further along the life-course than has previously been investigated. The integration of over 12 years of public record data, with in-depth assessments of childhood conduct problems across the first three decades of life, provides an unprecedented test of the long-term societal costs associated with distinct trajectories of childhood conduct problems. However, these findings should also be interpreted in the context of the study’s limitations. First, we focused broadly on societal costs and did not assign monetary values to outcome measures, preventing comparison of the relative economic weight across different service domains. Future cost-benefit analyses of intervention and population-level studies should more precisely estimate dollar amounts that accompany these public expenditures. Second, the administrative records linked in this study did not capture educational service usage in both community and residential settings, which should be explored in future research. Third, service usage was only observed as incurring within-participant; costs of conduct problems that are incurred by
