Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2011 Feb;30(1):1-15.
doi: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2010.06.015.

The effects of alcohol use on academic achievement in high school

Ana I Balsa  1 , Laura M Giuliano, Michael T French
Affiliations

The effects of alcohol use on academic achievement in high school

Ana I Balsa et al. Econ Educ Rev. 2011 Feb.

Abstract

This paper examines the effects of alcohol use on high school students' quality of learning. We estimate fixed-effects models using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Our primary measure of academic achievement is the student's GPA abstracted from official school transcripts. We find that increases in alcohol consumption result in small yet statistically significant reductions in GPA for male students and in statistically non-significant changes for females. For females, however, higher levels of drinking result in self-reported academic difficulty. The fixed-effects results are substantially smaller than OLS estimates, underscoring the importance of addressing unobserved individual heterogeneity.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Azevedo Simoes A, Bastos FI, Moreira RI, Lynch KG, Metzger DS. A randomized trial of audio computer and in-person interview to assess HIV risk among drug and alcohol users in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment. 2006;30:237–243. - PubMed
    1. Bray JW. Alcohol use, human capital, and wages. Journal of Labor Economics. 2005;23(2):279–312.
    1. Bray JW, Zarkin GA, Ringwalt C, Qi J. The relationship between marijuana initiation and dropping out of high school. Health Economics. 2000;9(1):9–18. - PubMed
    1. Brown SA, Tapert SF, Granholm E, Delis DC. Neurocognitive functioning of adolescents: effects of protracted alcohol use. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. 2000;24(2):164–171. - PubMed
    1. Bukstein OG, Cornelius J, Trunzo AC, Kelly TM, Wood DS. Clinical predictors of treatment in a population of adolescents with alcohol use disorders. Addictive Behaviours. 2005;30(9):1663–1673. - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources