THE EFFECT OF ALCOHOL ACCESS ON SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASES Evidence From the Minimum Legal Drinking Age

This paper evaluates the effect of alcohol use on the spread of sexually transmitted diseases by exploiting the discrete change in legal access to alcohol at the minimum legal drinking age of 21 years. With administrative data from California, I implement a regression discontinuity model to compare the number of gonorrhea cases in menan infection with a short incubation period of two weeks or lesscontracted just before and after the 21st birthday. Results show no evidence of an increase in STDs in the overall population, or within racial and county subgroups with the highest infection rates. These results suggest that the relationship between alcohol and STDs, which is conventionally believed to be causal, is more likely to be driven by unobserved heterogeneity, at least among the college-age population.