Fraternity Membership and Binge Drinking
Abstract
This paper examines the relationship between membership in social fraternities and sororities and binge drinking among 18–24 year old full-time four-year college students who participated in the 1995 National College Health Risk Behavior Survey. To deal with unobserved heterogeneity in binge drinking incidence and frequency regressions, I enter as explanatory variables various measures of situational and overall alcohol use. When these are added, the fraternity membership coefficient is substantially reduced in size, but remains large and highly significant. This suggests that fraternity membership increases binge drinking. If not, it identifies a very specific mechanism underlying the decision to join a fraternity: members drink more intensely than non-members even while doing so in similar frequencies and situations and for similar lengths of time. Particularly notable is that behavior by underage students appears to drive the relationship.Download Info
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.Bibliographic Info
Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 12468.Length:
Date of creation: Aug 2006
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12468
Note: HE
Contact details of provider:
Postal: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Phone: 617-868-3900
Email:
Web page: http://www.nber.org
More information through EDIRC
Related research
Keywords:Find related papers by JEL classification:
- I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Production
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2006-08-26 (All new papers)
- NEP-SOC-2006-08-26 (Social Norms & Social Capital)
References
References listed on IDEASPlease report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Marmaros, David & Sacerdote, Bruce, 2002. "Peer and social networks in job search," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(4-5), pages 870-879, May.
- Fersterer, Josef & Winter-Ebmer, Rudolf, 2003.
"Smoking, discount rates, and returns to education,"
Economics of Education Review,
Elsevier, vol. 22(6), pages 561-566, December.
- Josef Fersterer & Rudolf Winter-Ebmer, 2000. "Smoking, discount rates, and returns to education," Economics working papers 2000-02, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
- Fersterer, Josef & Winter-Ebmer, Rudolf, 2000. "Smoking, Discount Rates, and Returns to Education," IZA Discussion Papers 126, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
- Bruce Sacerdote, 2000.
"Peer Effects with Random Assignment: Results for Dartmouth Roommates,"
NBER Working Papers
7469, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Bruce Sacerdote, 2001. "Peer Effects With Random Assignment: Results For Dartmouth Roommates," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 116(2), pages 681-704, May.
- Nicola Persico & Andrew Postlewaite & Dan Silverman, 2003.
"The Effect of Adolescent Experience on Labor Market Outcomes: The Case of Height,"
PIER Working Paper Archive
03-036, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
- Nicola Persico & Andrew Postlewaite & Dan Silverman, 2004. "The Effect of Adolescent Experience on Labor Market Outcomes: The Case of Height," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(5), pages 1019-1053, October.
- Nicola Persico & Andrew Postlewaite & Dan Silverman, 2004. "The Effect of Adolescent Experience on Labor Market Outcomes: The Case of Height," NBER Working Papers 10522, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Jenny Williams & Rosalie Liccardo Pacula & Frank J. Chaloupka & Henry Wechsler, 2001.
"Alcohol and Marijuana Use Among College Students: Economic Complements or Substitutes?,"
NBER Working Papers
8401, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- J. Williams & Rosalie Liccardo Pacula & Frank J. Chaloupka & Henry Wechsler, 2004. "Alcohol and marijuana use among college students: economic complements or substitutes?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 13(9), pages 825-843.
- Frank J. Chaloupka & Henry Wechsler, 1996. "Binge Drinking In College: The Impact Of Price, Availability, And Alcohol Control Policies," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 14(4), pages 112-124, October.
Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Jason M. Lindo & Isaac D. Swensen & Glen R. Waddell, 2011.
"Alcohol and Student Performance: Estimating the Effect of Legal Access,"
NBER Working Papers
17637, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Lindo, Jason M. & Swensen, Isaac D. & Waddell, Glen R., 2013. "Alcohol and student performance: Estimating the effect of legal access," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 22-32.
- Lindo, Jason M. & Swensen, Isaac D. & Waddell, Glen R., 2011. "Alcohol and Student Performance: Estimating the Effect of Legal Access," IZA Discussion Papers 5525, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
- Jeffrey S. DeSimone, 2010. "Fraternity Membership & Frequent Drinking," NBER Working Papers 16291, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Jeffrey S. DeSimone, 2007. "Fraternity Membership and Drinking Behavior," NBER Working Papers 13262, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Paolo Buonanno & Paolo Vanin, 2007. "Bowling Alone, Drinking Together," "Marco Fanno" Working Papers 0055, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche "Marco Fanno".
Lists
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12468For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ().
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

