State governments have chosen a variety of policies that can improve the health of adolescents including tobacco taxes, beer taxes and the construction of family planning clinics under Title X. This paper evaluates the effects of these policies on smoking, drinking, and unsafe sex. We assembled a dataset on risk behaviors using the 1995 Youth Risk Behavior Surveys (YRBS) from 20 states and 3 metropolitan areas. This data was merged with 1995 state data on the tobacco taxes, the beer taxes, and the number of Title X clinics per adolescent girl. We used a seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) model to test whether estimates that accounted for the inter relatedness of smoking, drinking, and sex offered a better fit to the data than the assumption that the behaviors were independent. Probit estimates for the likelihood of any smoking, any drinking, and any sex showed that policies did not significantly affect the transitions from abstinence to indulgence. However, policies did affect the children who reported any of these activities. Among children who did indulge in risky behaviors, state policies had significant and worthwhile effects on the numbers of cigarettes, drinks, and sexual partners. Incidentally we found that children who lived in states with more family planning clinics per capita did not have higher rates of participating in sexual activity. We conclude that state policies can safely control adolescent risk behavior and that assessments of their effectiveness are improved by systems estimation.
Learning Objectives: 1. Describe theoretical reasons to expect correlations between a teenager's likelihood of smoking, drinking and unsafe sex. 2. Recognize how seemingly unrelated regression can take advantage of the theoretical correlation to improve detection of the effects of policy on teenage risk behavior 3. Understand the magnitude of reductions in smoking, drinking, and unsafe sex that may be achieved through tobacco taxes, beer taxes and the extension of title X clinics
Keywords: Adolescent Health, Economic Analysis
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.