Alcohol and Student Performance: Estimating the Effect of Legal Access

Jason Lindo, Isaac D. Swensen () and Glen Waddell ()
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Isaac D. Swensen: Montana State University

No 5525, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We consider the effect of legal access to alcohol, which is known to increase drinking behavior, on academic performance. We first estimate the effect using an RD design but argue that this approach is not well-suited to the research question in our setting. Our preferred approach instead exploits the longitudinal nature of the data, essentially identifying the effect by comparing a student's academic performance before and after turning 21. We find that students' grades fall below their expected levels upon being able to drink legally, but by less than previously documented. We also show that there are effects on women and that the effects are persistent. The main results are robust to the inclusion of individual fixed effects, individual trends, and individual quadratics, in addition to other controls, that account for the expected evolution of performance as students make progress towards their degrees.

Keywords: minimum legal drinking age; post-secondary education; alcohol (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 I21 K32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2011-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-lab
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published in: Journal of Health Economics, 2013, 32 (1), 22–32

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Related works:
Journal Article: Alcohol and student performance: Estimating the effect of legal access (2013)
Working Paper: Alcohol and Student Performance: Estimating the Effect of Legal Access (2011)
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