Understanding the Unintended Effects of Youth-Targeted Alcohol Control Policies

After many studies conducted during the 1970’s found that a lower drinking age had an effect upon the number of motor vehicle crashes involving teens, many stakeholders began to call for an increase in the minimum legal drinking age. While many states voluntarily increased their drinking ages, resistance from other states prompted the federal government to enact the Uniform Drinking Age Act in 1984 which set the minimum legal drinking age to 21. In another effort to strengthen drunk driving laws, in 1995, Congress passed the National Highway Systems Act wherein zero-tolerance alcohol policies must be adopted by states. While there is a large body of research regarding the impact these Acts had upon traffic fatalities, less research has been conducted on the unintended impacts. Using student enrollment and graduation data from the NCES from 1979-2003, this study uses ordinary least squares regression (OLS) with state and year fixed effects to estimate the impact of youth-targeted alcohol control policies on on-time high school graduation rates.