TY  - JOUR
AU  - Chatterji,Pinka
AU  - DeSimone,Jeff
TI  - Adolescent Drinking and High School Dropout
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11337
PY  - 2005
Y2  - May 2005
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11337
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11337.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Pinka Chatterji
State University of New York at Albany
Economics Department
1400 Washington Avenue
Albany, NY  12222
Tel: 518/442-4746
E-Mail: pchatterji@albany.edu

Jeffrey S. DeSimone
Department of Economics
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742
E-Mail: desimone@umd.edu
AB  - This paper estimates the effect of binge and frequent drinking by adolescents on subsequent high school dropout using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Young Adults. We estimate an instrumental variables model with an indicator of any past month alcohol use, which is by definition correlated with heavy drinking but should have minimal additional impact on educational outcomes, as the identifying instrument, and also control for a rich set of potentially confounding variables, including maternal characteristics and dropout risk factors measured before and during adolescence. In comparison, OLS provides conservative estimates of the causal impact of heavy drinking on dropping out, implying that binge or frequent drinking among 15 %uF81816 year old students lowers the probability of having graduated or being enrolled in high school four years later by at least 11 percent. Overidentification tests using two measures of maternal youthful alcohol use as additional instruments support our identification strategy.
ER  -