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Title: Educational Attainment and Alcohol Use before, during and after College
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Lynch, Jamie L.
Carlson, Daniel L.
Educational Attainment and Alcohol Use before, during and after College
Presented: New Orleans LA, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, April 2013
Cohort(s): NLSY97
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Alcohol Use; College Enrollment; Educational Attainment

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

The well-educated tend to have lower levels of morbidity and mortality than their less-educated counterparts. Although college attendance is generally associated with improved well-being and health behaviors, research suggests one exception – college attendance increases risky drinking. If a college education is linked with improved health, why is college attendance associated with an increase in alcohol use? This study attempts to resolve this theoretical disparity by comparing the drinking patterns of youth who do and do not attend college before, during, and after typical college ages. Results from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 cohort, indicate that although college attenders increase their drinking during their college years, college-non-attenders drink more, and more riskily, at the same ages. In general, our results confirm a negative relationship between educational attainment and risky drinking, but suggest that this relationship is driven by selection rather than a causal effect of educational attainment.
Bibliography Citation
Lynch, Jamie L. and Daniel L. Carlson. "Educational Attainment and Alcohol Use before, during and after College." Presented: New Orleans LA, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, April 2013.