Does the Minimum Legal Drinking Age Save Lives?

Gee, this is a very difficult issue to parse. Here's a recent paper that demonstrates that it doesn't:

Abstract: The minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) is widely believed to save lives by reducing traffic fatalities among underage drivers. Further, the Federal Uniform Drinking Age Act, which pressured all states to adopt an MLDA of 21, is regarded as having contributed enormously to this life saving effect. This paper challenges both claims. State-level panel data for the past 30 years show that any nationwide impact of the MLDA is driven by states that increased their MLDA prior to any inducement from the federal government. Even in early adopting states, the impact of the MLDA did not persist much past the year of adoption. The MLDA appears to have only a minor impact on teen drinking.

http://www.nber.org/papers/w13257

"The Atlantic's" gloss on the paper:

Public Health

Big Government, Small Results

Turns out Uncle Sam hasn’t done that much to stop teens from drinking and driving. The official story goes that the 1984 Federal Uniform Drinking Age Act, which threatened to withhold federal funds from states that didn’t raise their drinking age to 21, ended the glory days of teens driving to another state to get drunk and then careening home. According to federal estimates, pushing a uniform minimum drinking age nationwide saved 21,887 lives through 2002. New research argues that it wasn’t so: By studying state-by-state data, the authors found that most of the reduction in fatalities came from states that had raised the drinking age before the federal law went on the books; in states that raised the drinking age to comply with the federal pressure, there was little effect. Furthermore, fatalities in states that raised the age early dipped only briefly; in the other states, they either remained steady or increased after the age was changed. The authors conclude that the overall reduction in traffic deaths has had more to do with safer cars and better medical treatment for accident victims than with policies handed down from on high.

—“Does the Minimum Legal Drinking Age Save Lives?” Jeffrey A. Miron, Elina Tetelbaum, National Bureau of Economic Research

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200710/primarysources

I haven't read the study, the little abstract doesn't tell much. It is indeed hard to parse.

It is possible that all of the studies to date that found a positive effect of these laws were incorrect, and Jeffrey Miron's study is the most accurate. However, just his saying so doesn't convince me. You might note that this is a NBER working paper, and has not been reviewed. It is also notable that Jeffrey Miron has a blog, entitled The Case for Small Government: Musings of a Libertarian Economist. So the fact that he found big government didn't work might not shock one.

Does the death penalty deter murderers?

In my experience, underage drinking is impossible to stop, which explains why laws against it are ineffective.

Whether these laws are desireable or justifiable is one issue.

But enforceability is just as important, if not more so.

Best regards,
Alex R.

By studying state-by-state data, the authors found that most of the reduction in fatalities came from states that had raised the drinking age before the federal law went on the books; in states that raised the drinking age to comply with the federal pressure, there was little effect.

This is exactly what I would have expected to happen. The drinkers i the states that raised the age early are the ones who were driving across state lines to imbibe. When the other state raised its drinking age also, there was no longer any motivation to go there to do drinking.

Furthermore, fatalities in states that raised the age early dipped only briefly; in the other states, they either remained steady or increased after the age was changed. The authors conclude that the overall reduction in traffic deaths has had more to do with safer cars and better medical treatment for accident victims than with policies handed down from on high.

This is the more compelling part of the argument, IMO. It would seem that underage drinkers went back to finding clandestine sources for booze, once the legal alternative was removed.


I was a senior in high school at the time that Connecticut and Massachusetts lowered the drinking age from 21 to 18, and in grad school when it was put back up again. So I got to observe this period first-hand.

The lowering of the drinking age led to a sticky situation at our high school's graduation dinner, when some students who were of the (recently lowered) legal age tried to order beer and wine. The teachers chaperoning the event objected, but the restaurant said that legally they couldn't refuse to serve them.

My freshman year in college was the first year that it was legal for just about everyone on campus to drink alcohol. Prior to that, alcohol had been fairly freely available on campus. The college sanctioned it on the legal grounds of "in loco parentis". This was a somewhat shaky legal stance, but the local authorities never cracked down on it. This was the era of campus riots (there had been a student takeover of the administration building the spring before my first year), and they probably (and correctly) figured that any crackdown would provoke a riot.

My junior year the college started selling beer and wine officially in the student union. One of the conditions for obtaining the liquor license was the abolishment of in loco parentis and a ban on sale or distribution elsewhere on campus (such as dorm common rooms, which had become de facto pubs). There was a dramatic decrease in weekend rowdiness and vandalism problems on campus.


My own experience from the 1970s is that offering those in the 18-20 age group a legal and civilized source of alcohol promoted more civilized drinking behavior. The reason at the time for raising the drinking age again was traffic carnage. If it really is true that the change in policy was ineffective, then I am in favor of lowering the age to 18 again.

-Paul W.