Minimum legal drinking age and the social gradient in binge drinking

Low minimum legal drinking ages (MLDAs), as prevalent in many European countries, are severely understudied. We use rich survey and administrative data to estimate the impact of the Austrian MLDA of 16 on teenage drinking behavior and morbidity. Regression discontinuity estimates show that legal acc...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of health economics 2022-01, Vol.81, p.102571-102571, Article 102571
Main Authors: Ahammer, Alexander, Bauernschuster, Stefan, Halla, Martin, Lachenmaier, Hannah
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Access
Adolescent
Adolescent boys
Adolescents
Age Factors
Alcohol
Alcohol Drinking
Alcoholic Beverages
Binge drinking
Binge Drinking - epidemiology
Customers
Discontinuity
Drinking behavior
Health economics
Hospitalization
Humans
Intoxication
Male
Morbidity
Socioeconomic status
Underage Drinking
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Low minimum legal drinking ages (MLDAs), as prevalent in many European countries, are severely understudied. We use rich survey and administrative data to estimate the impact of the Austrian MLDA of 16 on teenage drinking behavior and morbidity. Regression discontinuity estimates show that legal access to alcohol increases the frequency and intensity of drinking, which results in more hospital admissions due to alcohol intoxication. The effects are stronger for boys and teenagers with low socioeconomic background. Evidence suggests that the policy’s impact cannot be fully explained by access. Data from an annual large-scale field study show that about 25 percent of retailers sell even hard liquor to underage customers. More generally, perceived access to alcohol is very high and hardly changes at the MLDA. However, teenagers consider binge drinking at weekends to be less harmful after gaining legal access.
ISSN:0167-6296
1879-1646
DOI:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2021.102571