Social jobs and the returns to drinking

Abstract

We uniquely show that the returns to drinking in social jobs exceed those in non-social jobs. The higher returns remain when controlling for worker personality, when including individual fixed effects and in a series of robustness exercises. This showing fits the hypothesis that drinking assists the formation of social capital, capital that has greater value in social jobs. We are also the first to show that drinking may proxy both general and specific social capital formation. Drinking during a previous employer and during a current employer have returns and each have higher returns in a current social job.

Keywords: Returns to drinking; Social capital; Social occupations.