Drink, pregnancy and earnings

Last week, Nice advised women to avoid alcohol whilst they were pregnant. New economic research supports this, as it suggests that drinking during pregancy has long-term effects upon the child's educational attainments and earnings.
To establish this, J. Peter Nilsson looked (pdf) at the effect of a liberalization of Sweden's  tough alcohol laws back in the 60s. In November 1967, two Swedish counties,  Varmland and Gothenburg & Bohus, allowed ordinary grocery stores to sell strong beer. As a result, beer consumption in these counties leapt 10-fold, until the ban was re-imposed in July 1968.
And Mr Nilsson found that children in these two counties who were conceived just before the liberalization - and hence were likely to be exposed to more alcohol in the womb - did far worse in life than children in counties where alcohol was liberalized, or who were conceived in the two counties after the ban was re-imposed.
He found that men exposed to the extra drinking, on average, completed half a year less schooling than those who weren't exposed. And, at age 30, both men and women who were exposed earned one-fifth lower wages than those who weren't exposed - a massive effect.
If this sounds like the puritans are right, cheer up - exposure to alcohol after you've been born seems to raise wages.

Comments

[Chris Williams]

Hmm. . . was this because the average got shunted back a few months across the board, or the result of a small group of bingers giving their kids fetal alcohol syndrome, and thus depressing the mean that way?

[chris]

It's not just because of a small number with FAS. It seems that, for men, even the 40th percentile of earners exposed to alcohol do worse than the 40th percentile not exposed - so the effects go further up the earnings distribution than FAS alone would explain.
However, for the top half of earners, there seems little difference between the two groups.

[dearieme]

How do they know that the pregnant women drank more? What if their menfolk drank more, got drunk, and kicked their women about?

[Bruce]

I don't wish to undermine the importance of this, but I wonder what percentage of children were conceived under the influence of alcohol? I'm farily confidence all mine were.