Very interesting – haven’t read the study, but some very smart people are saying it holds water.
I didn’t believe it at first
Tyler Cowen
...we conjecture that binge drinking conveys unobserved social skills that are rewarded by employers.
Here is the full and very carefully done paper ( High School Alcohol Use and Young Adult Labor Market Outcomes | NBER ). I’ve known for a while there is a correlation between drinking and wages ( http://www.reason.org/news/alcohol_use_091406.shtml ), but only recently have I started thinking it might be more than a trick in the data. The effect disappears for women, once educational attainment is taken into account. So should you encourage your sons to drink, so as to learn rituals of social bonding, or is their binging simply a signal of sociability? I’ll note, by the way, that I am a not very social person who also doesn’t drink much, verging on not at all.
[quote]doogie wrote:
So am I a bad parent if I liquor up my kids when they become sophomores in High School, or am I just preparing them for their future?[/quote]
I’ve noticed in reading history and through people I’ve known over the years that the incidence of death by cirrhosis seems to be quite a bit higher amongst the most successful and powerful individuals, though the causation is probably not wholey the same as that in BB’s study.
Social drinking is useful. The Millionaire Next Door also hinted at this with its discussion of what most self-made millionaires spent colleged doing (average GPA was something like a 2.3 - and that included doctors and lawyers). It’s very easy to see in many business environments. Go to where the big dogs hang out and there are advantages to be made.
Those in position of relative power and responsibility may be more inclined to over indulge in alcohol as a result of stress. Disposable income in addition to a sense of deserved reward after a hard day’s work definitely factor in as well.
A big-shot downing high-dollar drinks has a lot in common with a poorer man drowning himself in PBR.
Still an interesting report on the social and financial issues surrounding alcohol.
[quote]DrVonNostrand wrote:
Those in position of relative power and responsibility may be more inclined to over indulge in alcohol as a result of stress. Disposable income in addition to a sense of deserved reward after a hard day’s work definitely factor in as well.
A big-shot downing high-dollar drinks has a lot in common with a poorer man drowning himself in PBR.
Still an interesting report on the social and financial issues surrounding alcohol.[/quote]
I agree with that assesment. I also believe personalities that tend to go into sales and executive positions are the same types who would tend to drink anyway. (i.e. the party animal will more likely end up in sales than in middle management). The average career salesman probably makes more than the average accountant, asistant, or middle manager.
Interesting. My intuition tells me that this probably depends on the industry as well. But what do I know?
However, I do think that the “drink beer equals more money” equation is a bit misleading. It would probably be more accurate to say social connections => more money. I mean, without beer, people would find other ways to socialize, and those connections would result in higher incomes. I wouldn’t be surprised, for example, if playing golf or tennis leads to making more money.
Actually, correlation doesn’t imply causality. Alcohol consumption in this case is just one indicator of intense socialization and major emphasis on “business connections” in the business world, especially on the C-level.
Playing golf/tennis or yachting, spending hours on long business dinners, attending “male bonding” drinking nights in strip clubs/bars, having you children attend the “right” school with the CEO’s kids, living in the “right” neighbourhood etc. are all features of the elaborate
social dance required to succeed in the middle-high management in the Western world.
It is scary how much you can actually advance your business career by just focusing on those above mentioned things.
[quote]loppar wrote:
Actually, correlation doesn’t imply causality. Alcohol consumption in this case is just one indicator of intense socialization and major emphasis on “business connections” in the business world, especially on the C-level.
Playing golf/tennis or yachting, spending hours on long business dinners, attending “male bonding” drinking nights in strip clubs/bars, having you children attend the “right” school with the CEO’s kids, living in the “right” neighbourhood etc. are all features of the elaborate
social dance required to succeed in the middle-high management in the Western world.
It is scary how much you can actually advance your business career by just focusing on those above mentioned things.
[/quote]
I think everybody got that and was making light of the article’s point.
[quote]RickJames wrote:
Social drinking is useful. The Millionaire Next Door also hinted at this with its discussion of what most self-made millionaires spent colleged doing (average GPA was something like a 2.3 - and that included doctors and lawyers). It’s very easy to see in many business environments. Go to where the big dogs hang out and there are advantages to be made.[/quote]
There is no way this is true. You won’t even get into a 1/2 decent med or law school with that GPA. You aren’t getting into any form of Ibanking either with a GPA like that, nor pretty much any other job on wallstreet.
These brilliant researchers at this illustrious institution have found that males who go to bars once a month earn 7 percent (in addition to the 10 percent “drinkers premium”) more than those males who do not, (ie, those who get sloshed at home or in the car while driving to work) Wow! That sounds like a positive statistical correlation to me!
There is really no way to control for this, since the bulk of the data comes from self reporting drunks who exaggerate and have been known to stretch the truth about their income. A significant percentage of these men were also found to be wearing women’s panties at the time of their interview. (non-published information from direct questioning)
Remember, when the Deputy busts them for DUI, they have to pay the fine, and it makes it kinda hard to legally drive without a license, so figure that into your study.
