The Effect of Youth Alcohol Initiation on High School Completion

Steven Koch and Kerry Anne McGeary

Economic Inquiry, 2005, vol. 43, issue 4, 750-765

Abstract: The social environment inherent in schools impacts both alcohol consumption onset and high school completion. The results reported here, based on data from the 1979--96 NLSY panels, show that the social coincidences between alcohol consumption and education are important determinants of both education completion and alcohol onset. Ignoring the social nature of these simultaneous decisions underestimates the impact of alcohol onset on education. After correcting for the presence of an endogenous positive relationship between schooling and alcohol consumption, we find that alcohol initiation before age 14 significantly reduces the probability of timeously completing high school by between 7% and 22%. (JEL I18, I21) Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.

JEL-codes: I18 I21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ei/cbi052 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:oup:ecinqu:v:43:y:2005:i:4:p:750-765

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Inquiry is currently edited by Preston McAfee

More articles in Economic Inquiry from Western Economic Association International Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().