Road to perdition? The effect of illicit drug use on labour market outcomes of prime-age men in Mexico
利用墨西哥全国调查数据和异方差性工具变量方法，研究发现非法药物使用显著降低了当地男性的就业率、职业地位和正规就业，并提高了失业率，其负面影响大于高收入经济体。
This research addresses the impact of illicit drug use on labour market outcomes of men in Mexico. We leverage statistical information from three waves of a comparable national survey and make use of the Lewbel’s heteroskedasticity-based instrumental variable strategy to deal with the endogeneity of the drug consumption. Our results suggests that drug consumption has fairly negative effects in the Mexican context: it reduces employment, occupational attainment and formality and raises unemployment of local males. These effects seem larger than those estimated for high-income economies. • This article analyses the impact of drug use on labour market outcomes in Mexico. • It leverages data from drug consumption surveys and adopts a heteroskedasticity-based instrumental variables approach. • Drug consumption worsens labour market outcomes in Mexico. • The results point out that drug use in Mexico is more harmful than reported in previous literature for high-income economies.