Title: |
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Health Behaviors and Labor Market Status: The Impact of Substance Abuse |
Description: |
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Previous studies on the effects of illicit drug and alcohol consumption on labor market outcomes have been mixed, with some studies even finding positive effects of drug and alcohol use on wages and employment status. Buchmueller and Zuvekas (1998) argue that it is necessary to separate out moderate use from more problematic use or abuse in understanding labor market impacts. We extend their work in two important directions. First, we use data from the 1992 National Longitudinal Alcohol Epidemiologic Survey (NLAES), which provides a larger (n=42,862) and nationally-representative survey, with improved labor market measures and similarly rich measures of alcohol and drug use and problems. Second, we jointly analyze the impacts of alcohol and drugs, whereas their previous work considered only drug use and abuse. Indeed, most of the previous literature focuses on either alcohol or drugs, but not both. Overall, we find that drug disorders are negatively associated with the probability of being employed but not earnings, while moderate drug use was not statistically associated with either outcome. We find no statistically significant effects of alcohol abuse on either employment or earnings. |
Author(s): |
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Samuel Zuvekas and Philip F. Cooper and Thomas C. Buchmueller |
Agency: |
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Rockville (MD): Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality |
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