Research Log: Recording Sources

1. Journal of Health Economics; Jul2011, Vol. 30 Issue 4, p740-752, 13p

Found on 10/9/2011

"Although several studies have investigated the effect of the MLDA laws on alcohol consumption, most of them have made use of the changes in the MLDA that occurred in the 1970s and 1980s at the state level. However, states where a lower MLDA was imposed might be different in unobserved ways than those states where the MLDA of 21 was enforced. If these unobserved differences at the state level are also associated with drinking habits of young adults, then one cannot estimate a consistent effect of the MLDA on alcohol consumption and alcohol consumption related outcomes using the simple variation of the MLDA law at the state level. In order to address this shortcoming, we exploit the discontinuity in drinking habits of young adults at age 21 and use a regression discontinuity (hereafter, RD) design to estimate the causal effect of the MLDA on alcohol consumption, smoking, and marijuana use among young adults. Our main identifying assumption is that the observed and unobserved determinants of these outcomes are likely to be distributed smoothly across the age-21 cutoff.⁵ Hence, the changes in alcohol consumption, smoking, and marijuana use trends at age 21 can solely be attributed to the MLDA law itself."
"For almost 40 years, most states voluntarily set their minimum drinking age law at 21. However, starting from early 1970s, several states began lowering their drinking age.⁷ As the issue of drunk driving became more pronounced and was linked with traffic fatalities and injuries, by 1983, most of the states raised their drinking age back to 21. On July 17, 1984, President Reagan signed into law the National Uniform Drinking Age Act mandating all states to adopt 21 as the legal drinking age within five years.⁸ By 1988, all states had set 21 as the minimum drinking age. Since then, it is illegal for youths under age 21 to purchase or consume alcohol in the United States."

This article provides information about drinking laws of the past. It states the history of all of the changes in the legal drinking ages all through out America. It also says the effects of different ages and how they compared
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2. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07448481.2010.502193

"In the decades since the United States implemented the 1984 Uniform Drinking Age Act, there has been a reduction in youth alcohol use and a dramatic decrease in underage alcohol-related traffic injuries and fatalities in the United States. A number of factors may have contributed to these declines in addition to the institution of a minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) of 21, including additional alcohol control legislation, a shift in the age distribution of the US population, and community and youth prevention programs. Although empirical evidence for many of these contributing factors is variable, the influence of MLDA 21 is well documented. MLDA is the most researched and supported alcohol control policy, with 241 empirical analyses conducted to assess its effectiveness from 1960 to 1999 and a body of research that continues to grow today. "

"Binge drinkers consume a reported 91% of all alcohol used among the college population and frequent binge drinkers (those who binge on more than 3 occasions per week) consume 68% of this total amount, with half of these frequent binge drinkers reporting 5 or more different alcohol-related problems. Such heavy alcohol use among American college students has received considerable attention because of high alcohol-related morbidity and mortality, and is widely considered a public health concern with serious immediate and long-term consequences."

This article provides a lot of information about underage drinking among college students in particular. It focuses on statistics involving binge drinkers. This article is concerned about how drinking affects a person's health.

3.Journal of Studies on Alcohol & Drugs; Jan2011, Vol. 72 Issue 1, p15-23, 8p, 3 Diagrams, 1 Chart

"Opponents of the initiative point to the demonstrated effectiveness of raising the MLDA on reducing alcohol-related outcomes among all affected youth, as well as the higher prevalence of alcohol-related outcomes in European countries with lower MLDAs (Babor, 2008; McCartt et al., 2009). Unfortunately, lowering the MLDA to observe the consequences would represent a social experiment on college campuses where the profound negative consequences resulting from lowering the MLDA in the larger society have already been demonstrated (Wagenaar and Toomey, 2002)."

"The data were obtained from the Social Norms Marketing Research Project (DeJong et al., 2006), which annually surveyed a sample of students chosen at random from each of 32 college campuses. Campuses were chosen from all four U.S. regions and matched on institution type, enrollment, and student demographics. Students were surveyed regarding number of drinks per occasion, number of drinking occasions per week, and style of drinking. "

This site provides a good comparison between the legal drinking agaes in America, as well as the legal drinking ages in some European countries with lower drinking ages. It compares the problems associated and also states that it should be tested to see if the differences are based on the differeing drinking ages or just cultural differences.