Since teens first took the wheel, studies have examined how drug use and other risky behaviors impact their driving. But what if we looked at that scenario from the other way around? Could it be that driving —and the new independence that comes with it — actually influences the risks that teens take? Gies assistant professor and micro-economist Julian Reif wanted to find out. So, together with former University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign PhD student Jason Huh, he embarked on a study exploring the effect of teenage driving on mortality and risky behaviors.

“We were interested in understanding determinants of risky behaviors among teenagers,” said Reif, whose new paper "Teenage Driving, Mortality, and Risky Behaviors" is forthcoming in the journal American Economic Review: Insights. “From prior research, we know a lot of descriptive facts about their key behaviors. In particular, there are a lot of differences between males and females in terms of the kinds of ways they’re most likely to die.”