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Title: Binge Drinking and Labor Market Success: A Longitudinal Study on Young People
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Keng, Shao-Hsun
Huffman, Wallace Edgar
Binge Drinking and Labor Market Success: A Longitudinal Study on Young People
Journal of Population Economics 23,1 (January 2010): 303-322.
Also: http://www.springerlink.com/content/pr751727668073n6/
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Springer
Keyword(s): Addiction; Alcohol Use; Earnings; Income; Labor Market Outcomes

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

[Editor's note: This paper appears to have been published twice by the Journal of Population Economics. See also, Journal of Population Economics, 20,1 (January 2007): 35-54, that appears in this bibliography.]

This paper presents a two-equation model of joint outcomes on an individual's decision to binge drink and on his/her annual labor market earnings. The primary data source is the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79), 1979-1994. We show that binge drinking behavior is quite alcohol-price responsive and is a rational addiction. A new result is that an individual's decision to binge drink has a statistically significant negative effect on his/her earnings. Furthermore, we conducted simulations of the short-run and long-run impacts of increasing the alcohol price. They showed that the tendency for an individual to binge drink heavily is reduced significantly, and the reduction is greater in the long-run than short-run simulation. Also, an individual's annual earnings were increased. However, in the structural model, an individual's earnings have no significant effect on his/her tendency to engage in binge drinking. Our results contradict earlier findings from cross-section evidence that showed increased alcohol consumption raised an individual's earnings or wages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bibliography Citation
Keng, Shao-Hsun and Wallace Edgar Huffman. "Binge Drinking and Labor Market Success: A Longitudinal Study on Young People." Journal of Population Economics 23,1 (January 2010): 303-322.