Annotated Bibliography on Legal Drinking Age

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Are you writing a paper on the legal drinking age and need some academic sources? The following annotated bibliography summarizes some good sources and follows through with providing more details about how it is useful in your research. If you need additional help, consider buying a sample annotated bibliography from Ultius.

Background on Legal Drinking Age Source Materials

The health impact on one's education has remained a longstanding issue in America. After recent changes to American drinking laws, in which only citizens over the age of twenty-one can consume alcohol, different opinions on teen and young adult drinking have been made. In this bibliography, we will look at studies on American youth drinking habits over a large period of time.

This annotated bibliography will analyze several studies detailing youth alcohol consumption and illustrate how excessive alcohol abuse impacts an individual's personal wealth and education. To understand this question, it is prudent to look at many studies regarding teen and young adult drinking, and illustrating how such studies provide information regarding the changes in the drinking age. 

Works Cited

Ruth C. Engs, RN, EdH, Associate Professor of Applied Health Science at Indiana University and a Board Member of the Alcohol and Drug Problems Association of North America, explains how drinking patterns and problems since the early twentieth-century have not changed drastically. Her study included interviewing students through the US at 56 universities. Her research supported the conclusions that "the proportion of students categorized as heavy drinkers remained constant over time" and other trends "represent the continuum of an established trend of fewer students to indicating drinking and driving related problems." Engs relies on cross-sectional and longitudinal studies compared to the changing legislation regarding the drinking age. In comparing her statistical results with similar studies, her hypothesis remained true; moreover, she offered brief, albeit useful, alternatives to school administrators in enforcing the drinking age aside from emphasizing the legal implications and penalties involved.

Alud, Christopher M. “Smoking, Drinking, and Income.” The Journal of Human Resources. 40.2. Spring 2005. Retrieved March 21, 2011 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4129535.

Christopher M. Alud is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Calgary. In his study, he attempts to show the correlation or causation between drinking and smoking and one's personal income. As an economist, he provides vital information to the impact such statistical data has on the the American economy as a whole. Moreover, the study concludes that those who are heavy and moderate drinkers have a greater chance at increasing their income than those who abstain from alcohol. Yet his study also shows that, “smokers earn 8 percent less than non-smokers”. Such data will help to understand the effects drinking has on one's income, which also has a direct correlation to one's eduction.

Jack K. Martin, Paul M. Roman and Terry C. Blum. “Job Stress, Dating Networks, and Social Support at Work.” The Sociological Quarterly. 37.4. Autumn 1996. Retrieved March 21, 2011 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4121406. 

All three members of this study are Professors at the University of Georgia, and their work serves to illustrate the problems with employee drinking. The research is mainly devoted to understanding how one's drinking behavior is affected by that individual's working environment and performance in the office, another idea that contributes to this paper's attempt to see how alcohol affects a person's lifestyle choices and education. Unlike the study done by economist Christopher Alud, this sociological study will help illustrate how alcohol, income, and education can be studied and interpreted in various ways, and will be crucial to balance this paper's goals.

Alexander C. Wagenaar and Mark Wolfson. “Enforcement of the Legal Minimum Drinking Age in the United States.” Journal of Public Health Policy. 15.1. Spring 1994. Retrieved March 22, 2011 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3342606.

This study, done by public health activists, helps to interpret the aftermath of the rise in the American drinking law to twenty-one years of age. Moreover, this article, which appeared over a decade ago, helps to give information regarding teen drinking and teen education, both of which are crucial components of this study. By suggesting that teen drinking was caused by laws that allowed individuals aged 18 and older to consume alcohol, the researchers ultimately try to interpret that teen drinking, as well as other public health issues (such as liver problems and traffic accidents) are shown to have decreased. Thus, this study can be interpreted as one that has a soundly grounded argument, as both Wagennar and Wolfson try to convey that a young adult's drinking habits have a great impact on their education and public safety. 

James R. MacKay, Andrew E. Murray, Thomas J. Hagerty and Lawrence J. Collins. “Juvenille Delinquency and Drinking Behavior.” American Sociological Association. 4.4. Winter 1963. Retrieved March 23, 2011 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2948834.

This study, which was completed in the sociological field, attempts to illustrate the correlation between juvenile delinquency and heavy drinking. Yet by defining juvenile delinquency as a broad term (often involving education), this analysis will serve useful for this paper. The study also attempts to define what “problem drinking” is and who takes part in it, defining problem drinkers as “daily drinkers.” The fact that many of the juvenile's shown have little or less education than others is another important piece of information to analyzing the drinking age. This study was published in 1963, at a time when nearly every state had 18 and older drinking laws. Thus, by incorporating it into this paper's analysis, the study will give insight into how the changes in drinking laws have shaped youth education over time.

Shao-Hsun Keng and Wallace E. Huffman. “Binge Drinking and Labor Market Success.” Journal of Population Economics. 20.1. February 2007. Retrieved March 20, 2011 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20730740.

The Journal of Population Economics is one of the most informative and critically successful economic journals in the field. The authors of the study, Keng and Huffman, are both Professors of Economics at the University of Kaohsiung and Iowa State, respectively. The authors attempt to illustrate that binge drinking has an extremely negative effect on an individual's income and overall health. This contrasts with some of the other studies previously shown, such as that of Christopher M. Alud, and even the authors themselves suggest that, “the results contradict earlier findings that showed increased alcohol consumption raised an individual's wages or earnings.” Such information will be crucial to this paper's analysis of American drinking, and will help detail the negative externalities posed by excessive alcohol consumption.

Boyer, Paul S. “Promises to Keep: The United States Since World War II.” Third Ed. Houghton Mifflin Company: New York, 2005.

Paul Boyer is a history Professor from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his study in American history, which analyzes overall social, political, and economic trends of the last several decades, will help to interpret how the drinking age has affected the Untied States on a whole. Boyer briefly touches on the subject, and concludes that legislation made to raise the drinking age was a large issue during the 1980's. Such information will illustrate the large social-political trends of the movement, and show which parties and individuals were involved in communicating their goals to either raise or maintain the drinking age. Moreover, Boyer suggests that elderly Americans were at the forefront in the charge to raise the drinking age, as opposed to younger individuals who fought to keep it at 18 or older.

William Alex Pridemore. “Heavy Drinking and Suicide in Russia.” Social Forces. 85.1. September 2006. Retrieved March 23, 2011 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3844421.

This study, done by Alex Pridemore, a Criminal Justice Professor at the University of Indiana, illustrates how American cultural norms regarding alcohol are vastly different than that in Russia. This will help broaden this paper's overall goals, which are to show how teen drinking and the raising of the drinking age have effected American youth and drinking norms. Pridemore states that, “Russia's alcohol consumption and suicide rates are among the highest in the world,” thus differing from American social norms.