Adolescent and Young Adult Drunkenness and Future Educational Attainment and Labor Market Integration: A Population-Based Longitudinal Study.

OBJECTIVE: Drunkenness is common among youth and has been linked to injuries and other acute consequences as well as subsequent alcohol problems. Less is known about the long-term consequences of drunkenness regarding future education and labor market integration, and how risk changes during the developmental course. We identified trajectories of drunkenness from early adolescence to young adulthood and examined how drunkenness was associated with subsequent outcomes in the domains of education, income, unemployment, and disability. METHOD: We used four-wave longitudinal data from 3,116 participants (1,428 men; 1,688 women) from the population-based Young in Norway Study (ages 13 to 31). Questionnaire data on drunkenness were linked to register data on subsequent educational and occupational outcomes. RESULTS: The frequency of drunkenness during the past 12 months increased from ages 13 to 21, followed by a levelling off and decline from age 25 to 31. Early drunkenness (at age 13) was related to lower educational attainment, lower income, and higher risk for disability and unemployment at age 32; yet, after control for covariates, most of these associations became nonsignificant. Later drunkenness (>21 years) was either not associated or inversely associated with educational and employment outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate that the effect of drunkenness changes during the developmental course. In early teenage years, drunkenness seems to be a marker of risk and is linked to poor educational outcomes and weak labor market integration. From the early twenties, drunkenness instead seems to be related to positive educational and work-related outcomes.

Predicting hazardous drinking in late adolescence/young adulthood from early and excessive adolescent drinking - a longitudinal cross-national study of Norwegian and Australian adolescents.

BACKGROUND: Research has consistently shown that early onset of drinking (EOD) is associated with alcohol-related problems in adulthood. However, recent reviews have identified several limitations in the early onset literature, including the use of retrospective reports, insufficient control for potential confounders, ambiguous definitions of the concept, and an assumption that early onset is independent of cultural norms and national alcohol policies. This study addresses these limitations by examining whether EOD, independent of early onset of excessive drinking (EOE), prospectively predicts hazardous drinking in late adolescence/young adulthood in Norway and Australia, two countries with different drinking cultures. METHODS: Data were drawn from two population-based longitudinal studies; the Norwegian Tracking Opportunities and Problems Study (n = 329) and the Australian International Youth Development Study (n = 786). Data were collected prospectively from mid adolescence (14-16 years) to late adolescence/young adulthood (18-25 years) and a modified Poisson regression approach was used to estimate prevalence ratios. Adolescent self-reports included measures of EOD and EOE. Young adults completed the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT). The results were adjusted for adolescent factors; age, gender, impulsivity, hyperactivity, conduct problems, smoking, early sexual intercourse and friends' substance use, and family factors; alcohol and drug use in the family, maternal education, family management and monitoring. RESULTS: Hazardous drinking was identified in 46.8 and 38.9% of young adults in Norway and Australia, respectively. Both EOD and EOE in adolescence were significantly related to an increased risk of alcohol-related problems in late adolescence/young adulthood in both studies, even when adjusting for possible confounders. CONCLUSION: Our findings indicate that adolescent drinking behaviour is an indicator of alcohol-related problems in late adolescence/young adulthood, even when controlling for a variety of covariates. This finding is in contrast to previous research on older adults, where no association between adolescent drinking and later alcohol-related problems were found when controlling for covariates. The divergence in findings may suggest that the impact of EOD/EOE is limited to the late adolescent and young adult period. Preventing drinking in early adolescence may thus have some impact on the drinking patterns in late adolescence/young adulthood.

Predicting early onset of intoxication versus drinking-A population-based prospective study of Norwegian adolescents.

AIMS: Recent research suggests that early onset of intoxication (EOI) may be of greater importance for a wide range of subsequent adverse outcomes than early drinking experiences without intoxication. However, research on antecedents of EOI is scarce. The present study identifies predictors of EOI and whether they differ from those of early onset of drinking (EOD). METHODS: Data was drawn from the prospective Tracking Opportunities and Problems (TOPP) study of Norwegian families (n = 382), which followed up mothers and their children with six data collections from childhood (age 1.5) to adolescence (age 14.5). Self-reports from the adolescents (parenting practices, adolescent's conduct problems and friends' deviant behaviour) and their mothers (adolescent temperament, socio-economic factors and household alcohol problems) were used to identify predictors of EOI and EOD. FINDINGS: A variety of temperamental, socio-economic, and family factors predicted EOI, whereas EOD was predicted of substantially fewer variables. Particularly, when controlling for relevant covariates, low levels of shyness, own conduct problems and having friends with deviant behaviour prospectively predicted EOI, but not EOD. CONCLUSIONS: Future research and prevention efforts should take into consideration that EOI and EOD without getting drunk appear to be predicted by different risk factors in childhood and adolescence.