(More) party time in college? Relative age and undergraduate alcohol consumption

Slightly missing a school cutoff date, and more generally a student’s relative age in their cohort, have been shown in recent research to have important effects. For example, a student’s relative age appears to be related to their academic performance in both primary and secondary school, though how far into life various relative age effects persist is still an open question. Here, we make use of a nationwide sample of over 120,000 undergraduate students from over 600 U.S. institutions of higher education to see if relative age is related to alcohol consumption during college tenure. This sample was created by combining student data from the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) with school cutoff date data from government (mostly state) websites, all these data being publicly available. Methods include descriptive analysis, statistical hypothesis testing, (fixed effects) logistic regression, and (fixed effects) ordered logistic regression. State cutoff date laws for kindergarten enrollment result in some undergraduate students turning the legal drinking age almost a full year before others in their cohort. Results suggest students of older relative ages are generally drinking less alcohol than their peers during undergraduate tenure, perhaps implying the maturity effect of older age (as discussed by others who have researched the effects of relative age) is stronger than the legal deterrence effect. These results appear robust to different types of alcohol (beer, wine, and liquor), time spent at parties where alcohol is present, as well as a significant list of control variables and model specification. Related outcomes are also examined. These include drinking behavior during a student's senior year in high school and academic performance during college. Relative age appears to have the same relationships with high school drinking and partying habits as it does with these same behaviors in college. However, relative age appears unrelated to academic achievement in college (e.g., graduating grade point average (GPA)), both in general or through its impact on collegiate drinking and partying behaviors.