We exploit a reduction in the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) in New Zealand from 20 to 18 to study the dynamics of youth risk-taking. Using the universe of road accidents over 15 years and an event history approach, we find no evidence that lowering the drinking age increased alcohol-related accidents among teens. Complementary results of a cohort analysis suggest that reducing the drinking age even led to a short-term decline in risky driving among youths directly affected by the MLDA change but had no longer-run impacts on youth risky driving and drinking behaviors.
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Boes et al. (2024) studied this question.
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