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High School Alcohol Use and Young Adult Labor Market Outcomes

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  • Pinka Chatterji
  • Jeffrey DeSimone

Abstract

We estimate the relationship between 10th grade binge drinking in 1990 and labor market outcomes in 2000 among National Educational Longitudinal Survey respondents. For females, adolescent drinking and adult wages are unrelated, and negative employment effects disappear once academic achievement is held constant. For males, negative employment effects and, more strikingly, positive wage effects persist after controlling for achievement as well as background characteristics, educational attainment, and adult binge drinking and family and job characteristics. Accounting for illegal drug use and other problem behaviors in 10th grade eliminates the unemployment effect, but strengthens the wage effect. As the latter is not explicable by the health, income or social capital justifications that are often used for frequently observed positive correlations between adult alcohol use and earnings, we conjecture that binge drinking conveys unobserved social skills that are rewarded by employers.

Suggested Citation

  • Pinka Chatterji & Jeffrey DeSimone, 2006. "High School Alcohol Use and Young Adult Labor Market Outcomes," NBER Working Papers 12529, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12529
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    Cited by:

    1. Paolo Buonanno & Paolo Vanin, 2013. "Bowling alone, drinking together," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 1635-1672, June.
    2. 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.
    3. L. Corazzini & A. Filippin & P. Vanin, 2014. "Economic Behavior under Alcohol Influence: An Experiment on Time, Risk, and Social Preferences," Working Papers wp944, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    4. Donata Bessey & Uschi Backes-Gellner, 2009. "Marijuana Consumption, Educational Outcomes and Labor Market Success: Evidence from Switzerland," Economics of Education Working Paper Series 0043, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW).
    5. Jeff DeSimone, 2010. "Drinking and academic performance in high school," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(12), pages 1481-1497.
    6. Adams, Scott J. & Heywood, John S. & Ullman, Darin F. & Venkatesh, Shrathinth, 2022. "Social jobs and the returns to drinking," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 46(C).
    7. Sabia, Joseph J. & Nguyen, Thanh Tam, 2016. "The Effect of Medical Marijuana Laws on Labor Market Outcomes," IZA Discussion Papers 9831, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Klajdi Bregu & Cary Deck & Lindsay Ham & Salar Jahedi, 2017. "The Effects of Alcohol Use on Economic Decision Making," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 83(4), pages 886-902, April.
    9. Guettabi, Mouhcine & Munasib, Abdul, 2015. "The Impact of Obesity on Consumer Bankruptcy," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 17(C), pages 208-224.
    10. Marlon P. Mundt & Michael T. French, 2013. "Adolescent alcohol use, sociability and income as a young adult," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(23), pages 3329-3339, August.
    11. Nguyen, Hieu, 2019. "How does alcohol access affect transitional adults’ healthy dietary behaviors?," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 82-95.
    12. Michael French & Johanna Catherine Maclean & Jody Sindelar & Hai Fang, 2011. "The morning after: alcohol misuse and employment problems," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(21), pages 2705-2720.
    13. Todd C. Neumann, 2013. "The effect of drinking and smoking on the labour market outcomes of low-income young adults," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(5), pages 541-553, February.
    14. Eric Crampton & Matt Burgess & Brad Taylor, 2011. "The Cost of Cost Studies," Working Papers in Economics 11/29, University of Canterbury, Department of Economics and Finance.
    15. Marina Kolosnitsyna & Natalia Khorkina & Anton Volkov, 2017. "Alcohol Policies and Crime Rates in Russian Regions," HSE Working papers WP BRP 11/PSP/2017, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    16. Luca Corazzini & Antonio Filippin & Paolo Vanin, 2015. "Economic Behavior under the Influence of Alcohol: An Experiment on Time Preferences, Risk-Taking, and Altruism," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(4), pages 1-25, April.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
    • J2 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor
    • J3 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs

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