State Liquor Policies, Maternal Substance Use, and Child Outcomes
- Presenter:
Chair: Michael Grossman; Discussant: Ellen Meara Tue June 6, 2006 15:30-17:00 Room 332
State regulations on the consumption of alcohol by minors are widely credited with reducing teen drinking and alcohol-related traffic fatalities. Less often emphasized is the potential effect of these laws on pregnancy and drinking while pregnant, and subsequent outcomes for infants. Surprisingly little is known about whether, by reducing drinking by young women, these regulations also improve birth and infant outcomes. We focus on the changes in minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) laws that occurred in many states in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The principal objective of the study is to evaluate the consequences of drinking laws and maternal substance use on birth and infant outcomes. There are two channels by which substance use among teenagers affects the health of the next generation. First, by increasing risky sexual behavior, youth alcohol consumption could change the composition of births towards younger mothers and unintended pregnancies. Second, dependent of the compositional effect, drinking alcohol during pregnancy may directly cause poor health outcomes. Because alcohol and tobacco are often used jointly, minimum drinking age laws may affect maternal smoking as well. The specific aims of our project are: 1. To estimate the effects of MLDA laws and enforcement on substance use, with a particular emphasis on alcohol and tobacco use by young women and pregnant women. 2. To estimate the effects of MLDA laws and enforcement on sexual behavior, pregnancies, and births to young women. 3. To evaluate the impact of maternal alcohol and tobacco consumption on birth and early childhood outcomes, using changes in MLDA laws as a source of exogenous variation in alcohol and tobacco use. We use both the restricted version of the NLSY 79 (National Longitudinal Survey of Youth) and Vital Statistics microdata to address these questions. Preliminary results are as follows: 1. MLDA laws reduce alcohol and tobacco use for affected cohorts, and reduce drinking among pregnant young women (see Table 1). 2. The effect of MLDA laws on sexual activity and births is small, but may be larger for some sub-groups. 3. MLDA laws are associated with reduced incidence of low birthweight among infants born to affected cohorts (see Table 2).
