Minimum Legal Drinking Age and Educational Outcomes

Manuel Bagues and Carmen Villa ()
Additional contact information
Carmen Villa: University of Warwick

No 17507, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Over the past decades, many European countries have raised the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) from 16 to 18 years. This study provides novel evidence of the impact of this policy on educational outcomes by exploiting the staggered timing of MLDA changes across Spanish regions. Raising the MLDA decreased alcohol consumption among adolescents aged 14–17 by 8 to 18% and improved their exam performance by 4% of a standard deviation. This effect appears driven by alcohol's direct impact on cognitive ability, as we find no significant changes in potential mediators like use of other substances or time spent on leisure activities, including socialising, sports, gaming, or internet use. We also observe a decrease in tranquilliser and sleeping pill use, suggesting improved mental health. Our findings indicate that reducing teenage alcohol consumption represents a significant opportunity to improve educational outcomes in Europe, where youth drinking rates remain notably high.

Keywords: alcohol; adolescence; minimum legal drinking age; PISA (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I18 I21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52 pages
Date: 2024-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-hea, nep-law, nep-neu and nep-spo
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp17507.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Minimum Legal Drinking Age and Educational Outcomes (2024)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17507

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().