Effects of the Minimum Drinking Age on Mortality, Nonfatal Injury, and Crime

最低饮酒年龄对死亡率、非致命伤害和犯罪的影响

• 批准号: 7504048
• 负责人: CHRISTOPHER S. CARPENTER
• 金额: $ 9.18万
• 依托单位: NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2007-09-30 至 2010-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7504048
• 关键词: Adverse effects; Adverse event; Affect; Age; Alcohol consumption; Alcohols; Cause of Death; Cessation of life; Characteristics; Crime; Data; Disease regression; Ethnic Origin; Frequencies; Goals; Health; Health Policy; Heavy Drinking; Hospitalization; Individual; Injury; Laws; Measures; Outcome; Personal Satisfaction; Policies; Probability; Public Health; Race; Rate; Research; Research Design; Research Project Grants; Series; Side; Surveys; United States; Work; Youth; alcohol availability; base; design; drinking; experience; interest; legal drinking age; mortality; preference; racial and ethnic disparities; social; treatment effect; trend; underage drinking; young adult

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): A large body of research has established that there is a strong association between excessive alcohol consumption and numerous adverse health and social outcomes, but there is less evidence as to what proportion of this correlation is causal. This project will estimate the effect of alcohol consumption on the probability of arrest, hospitalization, and death by exploiting the fact that an individual's access to alcohol increases discretely at age 21 the minimum legal drinking age in the US. This institutional feature allows the use of a regression discontinuity design (RDD) to obtain unbiased estimates of the effect of alcohol consumption on the rate of adverse outcomes. The RDD approach takes advantage of a situation in which the treatment of interest varies discontinuously across some predetermined threshold (e.g. a discontinuous change in alcohol availability upon turning age 21). In this case, comparisons of individuals just on either side of the threshold will yield an unbiased estimate of the true effect of the treatment on outcomes since -- apart from the treatment of interest -- all other variables will trend smoothly across the discontinuity. This research will implement a series of RDD analyses using both survey and confidential administrative data on alcohol consumption, arrests, hospitalizations and deaths to identify the reduced form causal effects of minimum drinking age laws on alcohol consumption and its adverse outcomes. The first step will be documenting how both the frequency and intensity of alcohol consumption change at age 21. The next step will be to determine which types of injuries, causes of death, and types of crimes are causing any abrupt increases in adverse events and how this varies by race and ethnicity. Combining the reduced form estimates will give the implied Instrumental Variables estimate of the return to reducing alcohol consumption. The overall goal of this research project is to provide estimates of the returns to reducing alcohol consumption that policymakers can use when they are considering policies intended to reduce the adverse effects of alcohol consumption. The credible research design and the fact that the study focuses on a broad array of the adverse effects of alcohol consumption among youth mean it is well suited to accomplishing this important goal. Relevance This research project will evaluate the degree to which the minimum legal drinking age in the United States reduces alcohol consumption, mortality, injury, and crime among young adults. Since underage drinking rates in the US remain at startlingly high levels, our results will have important implications for the design of public health policies that would limit the availability of alcohol to youths. In so doing, this project will have the potential to reduce alcohol related harms experienced by youths.

描述（由申请人提供）：大量的研究表明，过度饮酒与众多不利健康和社会成果之间存在密切的关联，但是关于这种相关性的比例是因果关系的较少的证据。该项目将通过利用个人的酒精获取机会在21岁时估算逮捕，住院和死亡的可能性，从而估计饮酒对逮捕，住院和死亡的可能性的影响。这种机构特征允许使用回归不连续设计（RDD）来获得对饮酒对不良结果率的影响的无偏估计。 RDD方法利用了一种情况，即感兴趣的治疗在某些预定的阈值中不连续变化（例如，21岁时酒精可用性的不连续变化）。在这种情况下，仅在阈值两侧的个体的比较将产生对治疗对结果的真实影响的无偏估计，因为除了对感兴趣的治疗外，所有其他变量都将在整个不连续性中顺利进行。这项研究将使用有关饮酒，逮捕，住院和死亡的调查和机密行政数据来实施一系列RDD分析，以确定最低饮酒年龄法对酒精消耗及其不良后果的因果影响减少。第一步将记录饮酒的频率和强度如何在21岁时发生变化。下一步将是确定哪种类型的伤害，死亡原因以及犯罪类型正在导致不良事件的突然增加，以及这种情况如何随种族和种族而变化。结合减少的形式估计值将给出暗示的仪器变量估计，以减少饮酒的回报。该研究项目的总体目的是估计降低决策者在考虑旨在减少饮酒不利影响的政策时可以使用的饮酒量的回报。可靠的研究设计以及该研究重点是青年人饮酒的不利影响的事实意味着它非常适合实现这一重要目标。 相关性该研究项目将评估美国最低法律饮酒年龄降低年轻人饮酒，死亡率，伤害和犯罪的程度。由于美国的未成年人饮酒率仍然处于惊人的高水平，因此我们的结果将对设计公共卫生政策的设计具有重要意义，这将限制对年轻人的酒精供应。这样一来，这个项目将有可能减少青年人遇到的酒精相关危害。