WOMEN AND WORK - TIPPLERS AND TEETOTALERS

We seek to understand better the puzzling finding that, for women, alc oholism appears to be positively associated with the probability of be ing employed. Using the 1988 Alcohol Survey of the National Health Int erview Survey, we find that this association holds for white women onl y. For white women, alcoholism and early drinking are associated with higher educational attainment, a smaller family size and a lower proba bility of being married. In turn, these human capital indicators are a ssociated with greater labour supply, thus helping to explain the curi ous positive relationship between alcoholism and employment for women. An advance in this paper over our previous work is to examine life-ti me abstention from alcohol and its association with employment and hum an capital variables. We find that lifetime abstention is associated w ith lower: employment, unemployment and education and greater propensi ty to be married for both white and non-white women. (C) 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.