The Use of Drugs and Alcohol: The Impact on Employment, Unemployment and Risk of Social Exclusion.

In this project we will analyse the use of drug and alcohol and the impact on employment and unemployment in the transition from youth to adulthood. We will use unique data of a longitudinal survey of a representative sample of 2000 young people followed up through 25 years: from 1985 to 2010. Moreover, the survey data has been coupled with register data from FD-trygd by Statistics Norway for the total period giving information about income, education and all kind of allowed benefits (Sickness, unemployme nt, rehabilitation, social assistance and disability,with information of number of days for every year for each benefit.).To our knowledge no other study has been carried out following young people from youth to established adulthood with extensive inform ation about substance use/abuse and unemployment and employment careers. In a review of such studies (Maggs and Schulenberg 2005) show that studies are follow-ups from adolescence to young adulthood, and not into full adulthood when they will be establish ed in working life. We follow young people of the age of 17 to 20 years old into their fourties. We will analyse the use of drug and alcohol and the impact on employment and unemployment in the transition from youth to adulthood investigating the followin g research questions: -How does substance abuse among young people influence the risk of living by public support in adulthood? (Such as social assistance, rehabilitation, sickness benefits or disability benefits).Are there gender differences? -What are t he gender specific consequences of early debut age of illegal drugs or the age of first intoxication of alcohol for later alcohol consumption in adulthood and labour market integration? -To what degree does the combination of social marginalisation, menta l health problems and substance abuse lead to risk of exclusion from the labour market? Are there gender differences? -How does unemployment influence changes of consumption from youth to adulthood?