i knew i spent my college years doing the right thing

[quote]


Ex-binge drinkers 'earn more'
04 October 2006

Binge-drinking teenagers are likely to earn 6 per cent higher wages as adults than those whose school habits are more moderate, a new study shows.

Two American economists describe their findings as "remarkable", given adolescent alcohol abuse is also associated with poor academic achievement, brain damage and neurocognitive deficits which can last into adulthood.

The adult wage premium for young alcohol abusers was evident only in males.

Female adolescents who binge drank were more likely to receive lower wages later in life, and less likely to get a job at all.

Researchers Pinka Chatterji, from Harvard University, and Jeffrey DeSimone, of the University of South Florida, drew from an American survey that tracked more than 12,000 Year 10 students into adulthood.

Males who binge drank at school were marginally less likely to be employed 10 years later, but that effect disappeared once other possible influences were removed, like cannabis use, persistent alcoholism and disadvantageous family characteristics.

"Ultimately, among males employed at age 26, the wages of those who binge drank 10 years previously are about 6 per cent higher than those of their non-binging peers," says the paper, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The weight of previous research has shown adolescent alcohol abuse impairs academic achievement.

In 1996, the Health Economics journal published a study showing a 10 per cent increase in drinking frequency reduced the probability of high school graduation by 6.5 per cent.

Other studies show employees who currently drink are likely to earn more than those who do not.

But no previous study has specifically analysed the labour market outcomes of students who were binge drinkers, but may not have continued to abuse alcohol.

The authors were at a loss to explain their findings.

They found the wage premium was twice as large for those who drank a decade earlier than for current drinkers.

This discounts the "social networking" theory, where drinking with work colleagues might result in higher wages, as well as any "income effect" where people drank excessively because they could afford to.

The premium pertained to binge rather than moderate drinking, which discounts any positive health effect.

Moderate consumption has been linked to better health and productivity.

The study found that only alcohol abuse, rather than general use, was linked to future higher wages.

The authors' best guess is that teenage binge drinking is associated with unobserved social skills that are valued by employers.

"Our theory is that some difficult-to- measure trait, such as having good social skills and being popular among peers, underlies this association," they say.

"The sociability trait, or other unobserved characteristic, that is rewarded on the labour market ... appears uniquely correlated with binge rather than non-binge drinking during high school."

10/4/2006 2:31:05 PM

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don't drink so much maybe and search?

10/4/2006 2:59:49 PM