Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

The effect of minimum drinking age laws on pregnancy, fertility, and alcohol consumption

  • Published:
Review of Economics of the Household Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Analysis of micro-level data reveals that changes in the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) could induce changes in the intensity and location of alcohol consumption, sexual behavior, and teen fertility. Effects on teen fertility vary across different populations. Among 15–20 year-old non-poor whites, less restrictive legal access to alcohol decreases the probability of first pregnancy and abortion. For this group, easier legal access to alcohol likely increases the alcohol consumption in bars. For black and poor white young women, the results are sensitive to the alcohol consumption restrictions measure. A decrease in the MLDA increases the probability of first pregnancy and abortion. Yet, using a more precise measure that accounts for the MLDA and the woman’s age, these results generally no longer hold.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. For more details, see review studies by Wagenaar and Toomey (2002), Newbury-Birch (2009).

  2. A reduction in the MLDA across country in the early 1970s was alongside a decrease in the voting age; increases in the MLDA in the 1980s were compelled by the federal law requirements.

  3. If binge drinking is driven by non-beer alcoholic beverages then the MLDA for beer might not be the best measure. For the incidence of first pregnancy, the analysis of the MLDA for liquor yields, generally, qualitatively similar results (some estimates for black women become statistically insignificant).

  4. The abortion laws are discussed in Gold (2003).

  5. In recent years, the Amethyst Initiative, a public movement calling for a re-examination of the MLDA of 21, was supported by the leadership on many campuses.

  6. Wechsler et al. (2000) also reports some evidence in favor of this hypothesis that underage students tend to drink less often, yet consume more drinks per occasion; they are also more likely to drink in private settings.

  7. The Hispanics sample is the smallest, yielding the least reliable estimates particularly in abortion models, which additionally might suffer from the reporting bias.

  8. For exceptions see Dee (1999), Kaestner (2000). The literature review on the topic is in Wagenaar et al. (2009) and on the effects of MLDA—in Wagenaar and Toomey (2002).

  9. See Leigh and Stall (1993), Rashad and Kaestner (2004) for a literature review.

  10. The National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) contains no data on the retrospective mobility history. Therefore, the timing of past pregnancies cannot be matched to the state of residence or the state policy.

  11. The timing of first pregnancy is identified by month and year of conception variables created by the NLSY.

  12. For a falsification test, an extended data set includes 21–23 year olds. As expected, changes in the MLDA do not affect first childbearing of 21–23 year-old women (supplementary Appendix D, Table D-1).

  13. The comparison of birth and abortion ratios across NLSY, NSFG, and the national statistics is in supplementary Appendix B.

  14. A father’s presence, as well as the time that parents spend with their children can affect risky behaviors (e.g., See (2014) finds a decrease in teen risky behaviors due to parental time supervision). However, comprehensive intertemporal data on the household composition and the time allocation are not available.

  15. Delaney et al. (2013) report a strong association between alcohol consumed by students and drinking by their older siblings. The pregnancy and abortion results are robust to the inclusion of an indicator for the presence of older siblings.

  16. Wagenaar and Tomey (2002) conclude that 44–97 % of outlets in purchase-attempt studies sold alcohol to the underage without a request of age identification. Similarly, Wagenaar and Wolfson (1994) find that the law enforcement actions against outlets selling to minors are also rare.

  17. A further disaggregation into 18–20 and 15–17 age groups substantially reduces sample sizes and for the latter group produces noisy point estimates that lack credibility.

  18. A small number of miscarriages/stillbirths in the data set is insufficient to estimate the multinomial probability model. Instead, I estimate a probit model for abortion using a sample of pregnancies ending only in live births and abortions.

  19. Due to sample sizes, the inclusion of the state-specific linear trends is feasible only in the pregnancy model. The resulting estimates of discrete changes maintain the sign, but generally have larger standard errors. The sensitivity of results varies across the two measures of the policy change. For example, specifications with the “legally eligible” dummy produce qualitatively similar results; specifications with a noisier measure (the MLDA dummy) produce mixed results.

  20. In other words, the policy’s direct effect on black women age 18–20 is smaller and statistically insignificant than the potential indirect effect of the policy on women age 15–17, which is not only larger, but also statistically significant.

  21. The result for Hispanics is peculiar, as a decrease in the MLDA reduces the probability of pregnancy and increases that of abortion. A potential explanation is that the latter might suffer from a reporting bias. This will be the case, if the underreporting of abortions, which generally is observed among Hispanics, is systematic in the states with the more stringent laws (i.e., the MLDA is 21), compared to the states with a more liberal set of laws.

  22. The NLSY does not distinguish between poor and non-poor blacks or Hispanics.

  23. These questions were not asked prior to 1982. The thorough analysis of bar attendance among the underage is not feasible due to the aging of cohorts (the youngest cohort was 17 in 1982). Supplementary appendix E shows alcohol use and bar attendance trends. The trends confirm that drinking varies across races with the highest share among non-poor white women. Not surprisingly, among those ages 18–20 who report drinking, the percentage of women going to bars is substantially higher among those legally eligible to drink.

References

  • Carpenter, C., & Dobkin, C. (2009). The effect of alcohol access on consumption and mortality: Regression discontinuity evidence from the minimum drinking age. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 1(1), 164–182.

    PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Coate, D., & Grossman, M. (1988). Effects of alcoholic beverage prices and legal drinking ages on youth alcohol use. Journal of Law and Economics, 31(1), 145–171.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dee, T. S. (1999). State alcohol policies, teen drinking and traffic fatalities. Journal of Public Economics, 72, 289–315.

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  • Dee, T. S. (2001). The effects of minimum legal drinking ages on teen childbearing. Journal of Human Resources, 36(4), 823–838.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dee, T. S., & Evans, W. N. (2003). Teen drinking and educational attainment: Evidence from two-sample instrumental variables estimates. Journal of Labor Economics, 21(1), 178–209.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Delaney, L., Kapteyn, A., & Smith, J. P. (2013). Why do some Irish drink so much? Family, historical and regional effects on students’ alcohol consumption and subjective normative thresholds. Review of Economics of the Household, 11(1), 1–27.

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Donovan, C., & McEwan, R. (1995). A review of the literature examining the relationship between alcohol use and HIV-related sexual risk-taking in young people. Addiction, 90, 319–328.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Fertig, A. R., & Watson, T. (2009). Minimum drinking age laws and infant health outcomes. Journal of Health Economics, 28(3), 737–747.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Finer, L. B., & Henshaw, S. K. (2006). Disparities in rates of unintended pregnancy in the United States, 1994 and 2002. Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 38(2), 90–96.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Fletcher, J. M., & Wolfe, B. L. (2009). Education and labor market consequences of teenage childbearing: Evidence using the timing of pregnancy outcomes and community fixed effects. Journal of Human Resources, 44(2), 303–325.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gold, R. B. (2003). Lessons from before Roe: Will past be prologue? Guttmacher Report on Public Policy, March, 8–11.

  • Grossman, M., Chaloupka, F. J., Saffer, H., & Laixuthai, A. (1994). Effects of alcohol price policy on youth: A summary of economic research. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 4(2), 347–364.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grossman, M., & Markowitz, S. (2005). I did what last night? Adolescent risky sexual behaviors and substance use. Eastern Economic Journal, 31(3), 383–405.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hingson, R. W., Strunin, L., Berlin, B. M., & Heeren, T. (1990). Beliefs about AIDS, use of alcohol and drugs, and unprotected sex among Massachusetts adolescents. American Journal of Public Health, 80, 295–299.

    Article  PubMed Central  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Jones, E. F., & Forrest, J. D. (1992). Underreporting of abortion in surveys of U.S. women: 1976 to 1988. Demography, 29(1), 113–126.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kaestner, R. (2000). A note on the effect of minimum drinking age laws on youth alcohol consumption. Contemporary Economic Policy, 18(3), 315–325.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leigh, B., & Stall, R. (1993). Substance use and risky sexual behavior for exposure to HIV, issues in methodology, interpretation and prevention. American Psychologist, 48(10), 1035–1044.

    Article  PubMed Central  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Long, J. S. (1997). Regression models for categorical and limited dependent variables. A volume in the Sage series for advanced quantitative techniques. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Markowitz, S., Kaestner, R., & Grossman, M. (2005). An investigation of the effects of alcohol consumption and alcohol policies on youth risky sexual behaviors. American Economic Review, 95(2), 263–266.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Markowitz, S., & Tauras, J. (2009). Substance use among adolescent students with consideration of budget constraints. Review of Economics of the Household, 7(4), 423–446.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Newbury-Birch D. (2009). Impact of alcohol consumption on young people: A systematic review of published reviews. Research Report DCSF-RR067.

  • O’Hare, T. (2005). Risky sex and drinking contexts in freshman first offenders. Addictive Behaviors, 30(9), 585–588.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • O’Malley, P. M., & Wagenaar, A. C. (1990). Minimum drinking age laws: Effects on American youth 1976–1987. Monitoring the Future Occasional Paper Series 28.

  • Rashad, I., & Kaestner, R. (2004). Teenage sex, drugs and alcohol use: Problems identifying the cause of risky behavior. Journal of Health Economics, 23(3), 493–503.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rees, D. I., Argys, L. M., & Averett, S. L. (2001). New evidence on the relationship between substance use and adolescent sexual behavior. Journal of Health Economics, 20(5), 835–845.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • See, S. G. (2014). Parental supervision and adolescent risky behaviors. Review of Economics of the Household,. doi:10.1007/s11150-014-9254-9.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sen, B. (2003). Can beer taxes affect teen pregnancy? evidence based on teen abortion rates and birth rates. Southern Economic Journal, 70(2), 328–343.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Udry, J. R., Gaughan, M., Schwingl, P. J., & van den Berg, B. J. (1996). A medical record linkage analysis of abortion underreporting. Family Planning Perspectives, 28(5), 228–231.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Wagenaar, A. C. (1982). Legal minimum drinking age changes in the United States, 1970–1981. Alcohol Health and Research World, 6, 21–26.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wagenaar, A. C., Salois, M. J., & Komro, K. A. (2009). Effects of beverage alcohol price and tax levels on drinking: A meta-analysis of 1003 estimates from 112 studies. Addiction, 104, 179–190.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Wagenaar, A. C., & Toomey, T. L. (2002). Effects of minimum drinking age laws: Review and analyses of the literature from 1960 to 2000. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 14, 206–226.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wagenaar, A. C., & Wolfson, M. (1994). Enforcement of the legal minimum drinking age in the United States. Journal of Public Health Policy, 15, 37–53.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Wechsler, H., Kuo, M., Lee, H., & Dowdall, G. W. (2000). Environmental correlates of underage alcohol use and related problems of college students. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 19(1), 24–29.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

I sincerely thank Thomas A. Mroz, Paul W. Wilson, Sumner La Croix, Sang-Hyop Lee, Alan Barreca, Michael Sinkey, and Petru S. Stoianovici for their advice and comments.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2424 Maile Way, 540 Saunders Hall, Honolulu, HI, 96822, USA

    Inna Cintina

Authors
  1. Inna Cintina
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Inna Cintina.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary material 1 (DOCX 173 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Cintina, I. The effect of minimum drinking age laws on pregnancy, fertility, and alcohol consumption. Rev Econ Household 13, 1003–1022 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-014-9271-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-014-9271-8

Keywords

JEL Classification

Search

Navigation