Lowering the legal drinking age from 21 to 18 might lead to a surprising outcome – more high school dropouts.
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Plus, Plunk explained, states made those policy changes based on national trends at the time – mainly, the belief that with the voting age lowered to 18, the legal drinking age should drop, too.
While there isn’t solid proof the drinking age was to blame for the elevated dropout rate, experts say access to alcohol may impact kids who are already as risk of dropping out of school. Policies that allowed 18 year olds to buy alcohol showed a particular impact on minority students, as well as young people whose parents had drinking problems. Would it be wise to lower the drinking age?
“We saw a 3% increase in dropout rates in the whole sample”, Plunk says.
But a new study suggests that could result in more students dropping out of high school.
Plunk acknowledges there are a number of external environmental factors that might affect the connection between dropout rates and lowering drinking age.
Plunk and his colleagues looked at data from the 1970s and 1980s to see if there were differences in dropout rates. Advocates of the change contend that young college students would drink more responsibly if they could legally buy alcohol at bars and restaurants.
When Plunk and his team went back through high school graduation records, they found that 17-year-olds were affected by their 18-year-old peers.
A new report in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs suggests that lowering the drinking age may solve the problem of binge drinking on college campuses.
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“I think this study gives us some idea of what could happen if we lower the legal drinking age“, he said.
