TY  - JOUR
AU  - Kaestner,Robert
AU  - Yarnoff,Benjamin
TI  - Long Term Effects of Minimum Legal Drinking Age Laws on Adult Alcohol Use and Driving Fatalities
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15439
PY  - 2009
Y2  - October 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15439
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15439.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Robert Kaestner
Institute of Government and Public Affairs
University of Illinois
815 West Van Buren Street, Suite 525
Chicago, IL  60607
Tel: 312/996-8227
E-Mail: kaestner.robert@gmail.com

Ben Yarnoff
Department of Economics
University of Illinois at Chicago
601 South Morgan Street
Chicago, IL 60607
E-Mail: byarno2@uic.edu
AB  - We examine whether adult alcohol consumption and traffic fatalities are associated with the legal drinking environment when a person was between the ages of 18 and 20.  We find that moving from an environment in which a person was never allowed to drink legally to one in which a person could always drink legally was associated with a 20 to 30 percent increase in alcohol consumption and a ten percent increase in fatal accidents for adult males.  There were no statistically significant or practically important associations between the legal drinking environment when young and adult female alcohol consumption and driving fatalities.
ER  -