Early health‐related behaviours and their impact on later life chances: evidence from the US

Simon M. Burgess and Carol Propper

Health Economics, 1998, vol. 7, issue 5, 381-399

Abstract: This paper uses evidence from the US to examine the impact of adolescent illegal consumption and violent behaviour on later life chances. Specifically, we look at the effect of such behaviour by young men in late adolescence on productivity and household formation 10 years on. We find that alcohol and soft drug consumption have no harmful effects on economic prospects in later life. In contrast, hard drug consumption and violent behaviour in adolescence are both associated with lower productivity even by the time the individuals are in their late twenties. These effects are substantial and affect earnings levels and earnings growth. These results are robust to the inclusion of a rich set of additional controls measuring aspects of the individuals' backgrounds. However, we find no evidence of any of these behaviours significantly affecting household formation. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Date: 1998
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (31)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-1050(199808)7:53.0.CO;2-B

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:wly:hlthec:v:7:y:1998:i:5:p:381-399

Access Statistics for this article

Health Economics is currently edited by Alan Maynard, John Hutton and Andrew Jones

More articles in Health Economics from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().