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The Wages of Sin? Illegal Drug Use and the Labour Market

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  • Ziggy MacDonald
  • Stephen Pudney

Abstract

type="main" xml:lang="en"> We use data from the British Crime Survey (BCS) to analyse the relationship between illicit drug use and labour market outcomes for a sample of men and women aged 16–25. In using these data we highlight a serious design flaw in the BCS questionnaire structure that presents a serious barrier to statistical modelling of drug use at the individual level. We propose a simple way of overcoming this problem and proceed to estimate a model of occupational attainment jointly determined with unemployment and current drug use, conditional on past drug use. Separating the commonly abused drugs into a ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ category, we find that past hard drug use has a significant positive association with current unemployment, but find no significant association between past hard or soft drug use and occupational attainment. We also find no significant association between current drug use and attainment, although we observe that current drug use is associated with current unemployment.

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  • Ziggy MacDonald & Stephen Pudney, 2000. "The Wages of Sin? Illegal Drug Use and the Labour Market," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 14(4), pages 657-673, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:labour:v:14:y:2000:i:4:p:657-673
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/1467-9914.00151
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    Cited by:

    1. Jenny Williams & Christopher L. Skeels, 2006. "The impact of cannabis and cigarette use on health," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 969, The University of Melbourne.
    2. Lindsey Richardson & Anita Minh & Deb McCormack & Allison Laing & Skye Barbic & Kanna Hayashi & M.-J. Milloy & Kimberly R. Huyser & Kathleen Leahy & Johanna Li, 2022. "Cohort Profile: The Assessing Economic Transitions (ASSET) Study—A Community-Based Mixed-Methods Study of Economic Engagement among Inner-City Residents," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(16), pages 1-24, August.
    3. Ziggy MacDonald, 2004. "What Price Drug Use? The Contribution of Economics to an Evidence‐Based Drugs Policy," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(2), pages 113-152, April.
    4. Matt Dickson, 2013. "The Causal Effect of Education on Wages Revisited," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 75(4), pages 477-498, August.
    5. Jenny Williams & Christopher Skeels, 2006. "The Impact of Cannabis Use on Health," De Economist, Springer, vol. 154(4), pages 517-546, December.
    6. Jos'e-Ignacio Ant'on & Juan Ponce & Rafael Mu~noz de Bustillo, 2024. "Road to perdition? The effect of illicit drug use on labour market outcomes of prime-age men in Mexico," Papers 2405.10884, arXiv.org.
    7. M. D. R. Evans & Jonathan Kelley, 2004. "Effects of Family of Origin on Women’s and Men’s Workforce Involvement," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2004n25, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.
    8. Wang, Haining & Smyth, Russell & Cheng, Zhiming, 2017. "The economic returns to proficiency in English in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 91-104.
    9. Ziggy MacDonald, 2002. "The Employment Prospects of Scottish and English Drug Abusers," Discussion Papers in Economics 02/2, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.

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