Feb 23, 2012

Education and drinking (evidence from Australian twins)

We relate differences in problem drinking symptoms within pairs of identical twins to their respective differences in years of schooling. Isolating in this way the influences of family background and genes, we find that an increase in schooling attainment results in a significantly lower incidence of problem drinking for men. Thus, an extra year of schooling reduces the number of health problems caused by drinking by 0.14, and the probability of developing symptoms of Alcohol Dependence (AD) by 0.06. This negative link is robust to a variety of modifications to the identifying assumptions underlying our statistical analysis. Socio-economic implications of our findings are discussed.
That is the abstract of the paper "The effect of schooling on problem drinking: evidence from Australian twins" in the latest Applied Economics. A draft is here.
Are these kind of benefits included in measures of returns to education? 

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