The empirical work outlined in this proposal consists of three projects that will examine the effects of alcohol advertising on youth alcohol consumption. The significance of this research is highlighted by the level of alcohol advertising, which is about 1 billion dollars a year and by the level of alcohol participation by adolescents, which is about 50 percent for high school seniors. This project will estimate the effect of alcohol advertising on use, prevalence and binge drinking by youth for several age groups. The data sets are also large enough to estimate race and gender specific effects. The data sets will be augmented with alcohol advertising data and alcohol price data at the local level and with legal variables at the state level. The advertising data include spot television, radio, outdoor and magazines. These data will come from Competitive Media Reporting, which is the industry standard for advertising data. The first data set to be used will be derived from the new 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97). The NLSY97 will include 10,000 12 to 16 year olds. One advantage of this data set is that it contains current data on youth alcohol consumption. Another advantage of this data set is that parental data including family income is also available. The second data set will be derived from a pool of the 1992 and 1994 Monitoring the Future (MTF) baseline surveys of 8th, 10th and 12th graders. One advantage of this data set is that it contains over 100,000 observations on individuals aged 13 to 18. The third data set will be derived from the 1992 and 1994 MTF follow-up surveys. This data set will include two observations on about 10,800 individuals aged 19 to 31. One advantage of this data set is that it allows for differencing the data, which eliminates individual specific time invariant unobserved characteristics. The cross sectional nature of these data sets will address the deficiencies in prior time series studies of alcohol advertising. These data will also allow for the estimation of a demand for alcohol advertising. This is important since the estimated price elasticity of alcohol advertising can be used to estimate the effect of elimination of the tax deductibility of alcohol advertising.
| Saffer, Henry; Dave, Dhaval (2006) Alcohol advertising and alcohol consumption by adolescents. Health Econ 15:617-37 |
