TY  - JOUR
AU  - Chatterji,Pinka
AU  - DeSimone,Jeffrey
TI  - High School Alcohol Use and Young Adult Labor Market Outcomes
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 12529
PY  - 2006
Y2  - September 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12529
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12529.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Pinka Chatterji
State University of New York at Albany
Economics Department
Business Administration 111A
1400 Washington Avenue
Albany, NY  12222
Tel: 518/442-4746
E-Mail: pchatterji@albany.edu

Jeffrey S. DeSimone
Department of Economics
University of Texas at Arlington
701 S. West St.
Arlington, TX 76019
Tel: 817/272-3286
Fax: 817/272-3145
E-Mail: jdesimone@uta.edu
AB  - We estimate the relationship between 10th grade binge drinking in 1990 and labor market outcomes in 2000 among National Educational Longitudinal Survey respondents.  For females, adolescent drinking and adult wages are unrelated, and negative employment effects disappear once academic achievement is held constant.  For males, negative employment effects and, more strikingly, positive wage effects persist after controlling for achievement as well as background characteristics, educational attainment, and adult binge drinking and family and job characteristics.  Accounting for illegal drug use and other problem behaviors in 10th grade eliminates the unemployment effect, but strengthens the wage effect.  As the latter is not explicable by the health, income or social capital justifications that are often used for frequently observed positive correlations between adult alcohol use and earnings, we conjecture that binge drinking conveys unobserved social skills that are rewarded by employers.
ER  -