Alcohol and student performance: Estimating the effect of legal access

Jason Lindo, Isaac D. Swensen and Glen R. Waddell

Journal of Health Economics, 2013, vol. 32, issue 1, 22-32

Abstract: We consider the effect of legal access to alcohol on student achievement. Our preferred approach identifies the effect through changes in one's performance after gaining legal access to alcohol, controlling flexibly for the expected evolution of grades as one makes progress towards their degree. We also report RD-based estimates but argue that an RD design is not well suited to the research question in our setting. 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. Using the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we show that students drink more often after legal access but do not consume more drinks on days on which they drink.

Keywords: Alcohol; Post-secondary education; Minimum legal drinking age (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 I21 K32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (34)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167629612001476
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Alcohol and Student Performance: Estimating the Effect of Legal Access (2011)
Working Paper: Alcohol and Student Performance: Estimating the Effect of Legal Access (2011)
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:eee:jhecon:v:32:y:2013:i:1:p:22-32

DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2012.09.009

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Health Economics is currently edited by J. P. Newhouse, A. J. Culyer, R. Frank, K. Claxton and T. McGuire

More articles in Journal of Health Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().