Breaking the Link Between Legal Access to Alcohol and Motor Vehicle Accidents: Evidence from New South Wales

Jason Lindo, Peter Siminski and Oleg Yerokhin

No 7930, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: A large literature has documented significant public health benefits associated with the minimum legal drinking age in the United States, particularly because of the resulting effects on motor vehicle accidents. These benefits form the primary basis for continued efforts to restrict youth access to alcohol. It is important to keep in mind, though, that policymakers have a wide variety of alcohol-control options available to them, and understanding how these policies may complement or substitute for one another can improve policy making moving forward. Towards this end, we propose that investigating the causal effects of the minimum legal drinking age in New South Wales, Australia provides a particularly informative case study, because Australian states are among the world leaders in their efforts against drunk driving. Using an age-based regression-discontinuity design applied to restricted-use data from several sources, we find no evidence that legal access to alcohol has effects on motor vehicle accidents of any type in New South Wales, despite having large effects on drinking and on hospitalizations due to alcohol abuse.

Keywords: minimum legal drinking age; alcohol; health; drunk driving (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 K32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 69 pages
Date: 2014-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law and nep-tre
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Published - published in: Health Economics, 2016, 25 (7), 908 - 928

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Related works:
Journal Article: Breaking The Link Between Legal Access To Alcohol And Motor Vehicle Accidents: Evidence From New South Wales (2016)
Working Paper: Breaking the Link Between Legal Access to Alcohol and Motor Vehicle Accidents: Evidence from New South Wales (2014)
Working Paper: Breaking the Link Between Legal Access to Alcohol and Motor Vehicle Accidents: Evidence from New South Wales (2014)
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