(More) Party time in school? Relative age and alcohol consumption

School starting age policies result in academic cohorts where the oldest students are approximately a full year older than their youngest peers. A student’s relative age in their cohort has been shown related to many important outcomes. As examples, relatively older students have been found to be more focused and successful academically, more consistent in their related goals, have more friends, and are less likely to commit crime. Here, we examine the relationships between relative age and alcohol consumption (and partying behaviours) during high school and college. The sample used consists of more than 87,000 U.S. students who attended over 600 different colleges and universities, and even more high schools. These outcomes are found to be only mildly related to relative age, with evidence pointing towards older students drinking and partying slightly less during both high school and college. Though they had upwards of an extra year of being older than the legal drinking age during college, relatively older students drank slightly less, on average. Thus, among college students, the maturity effect of relative age appears stronger than the legal deterrence effect of minimum legal drinking age laws. (I23, I29, I12)