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The European Journal of Health Economics
Published in: The European Journal of Health Economics 6/2010

01-12-2010 | Original Paper

Adolescents alcohol-use and economic conditions: a multilevel analysis of data from a period with big economic changes

Authors: Mikael Svensson, Curt Hagquist

Published in: The European Journal of Health Economics | Issue 6/2010

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Abstract

This paper examines how the unemployment rate is related to adolescent alcohol use and experience of binge drinking during a time period characterized by big societal changes. The paper uses repeated cross-sectional adolescent survey data from a Swedish region, collected in 1988, 1991, 1995, 1998, 2002 and 2005, and merges this with data on local unemployment rates for the same time periods. Individual level frequency of alcohol use as well as experience of binge drinking is connected to local level unemployment rate to estimate the relationship using multilevel modeling. The model includes municipality effects controlling for time-invariant differences between municipalities as well as year fixed effects controlling for municipality-invariant changes over time in alcohol use. The results show that the unemployment rate is negatively associated with adolescents’ alcohol use and the experience of binge drinking. When the unemployment rate increases, more adolescents do not drink at all. Regular drinking (twice per month or more) is, on the other hand, unrelated to the unemployment rate. Examining gender-differences in the relationship, it is shown that the results are driven by behavior in girls, whereas drinking among boys does not show any significant relationship with changes in the unemployment rate.
Footnotes
1
Two municipalities were excluded because of non participation in 1 year (1995).
 
2
For example, in 2005, 68% used alcohol at least once (100–31.74%) and 52.5% report binge drinking at least once. This leaves a proportion of ~16% of adolescents reporting to have used alcohol but not reporting a large amount on one specific occasion (binge drinking).
 
3
The definitions of unemployment differ slightly between the Swedish Public Employment Service (used here) and the official Labor Force Surveys conducted by Statistics Sweden (which should be used for international comparisons). However, since we are interested in the change in the unemployment rate over time for the included municipalities, the important criteria is that the data are comparable across time for the municipalities.
 
4
Never drinking is the first category of the dependent variable alcohol use as shown in Table 1. Regular drinking is the proportion of adolescents drinking 2/month and 1/week or more, i.e., categories 4 and 5 of the dependent variable alcohol use as shown in Table 1.
 
5
To give some examples: in economic downturns the risk of parental unemployment increases and schools may cut-back on resources and staff. In economic upturns the opposite may happen, increased likelihood of parental employment and increases in school resources, etc.
 
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Metadata
Title
Adolescents alcohol-use and economic conditions: a multilevel analysis of data from a period with big economic changes
Authors
Mikael Svensson
Curt Hagquist
Publication date
01-12-2010
Publisher
Springer-Verlag
Published in
The European Journal of Health Economics / Issue 6/2010
Print ISSN: 1618-7598
Electronic ISSN: 1618-7601
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10198-009-0209-7

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