Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2010, 7 1907 that quantity elasticities encompass both the participation and quantity responses. With this similar logic, tax elasticities of binge drinking are also larger than participation elasticities: the binge drinking decreases by 2.5% with 1% increase in beer or wine taxes, and by 9–10% with liquor taxes. These estimates show that binge drinking is very sensitive to prices among pregnant women, and most sensitive to liquor taxes. Moreover, these elasticities among pregnant women are larger than those in the general population, in which elasticities range from −0.92 to −2.24 [27]. There are two ways that alcohol taxes can be seen to impact birth outcomes. One is through their potential effect on the types of women who give birth. Studies have shown a positive association between alcohol use and risky sexual behavior, especially in teenagers [30-31]. Therefore, a tax hike may reduce the likelihood of youth engaging in unprotected sexual activities, which delays motherhood. In this study, such impact is examined by characterizing the mothers shown in Table 3. The proportion of mothers younger than 24 years decreased by 16% points per one-cent increase in beer taxes, 2% points in wine taxes and 0.01 in liquor taxes. The relative number of mothers between ages 24–35 likewise increased with raises in alcohol taxes. Moreover, any one cent increase in beer taxes decreased the probability of a mother with an education level of high school dropout or lower (i.e., years of education smaller or equal to 12) by 29% points, 7% points in wine taxes, and 1% point in liquor taxes. As children born to these mothers are at higher risk for health problems [32], a decreasing proportion of these women implies better birth outcomes with higher alcohol taxes. Table 3. Composition of Mothers (Natality Files). Variable Young mother (< 24) Mother (25–35) Low education Beer tax −(00..106145*)** 0(0.1.04150**)* −(00..208795*)** Wine tax −(00..001075*)** 0(0.0.02033**)* −(00..006276*)* Liquor tax (−00.0.00021) 0(0.0.00081**)* −(00..000069)* # obs in estimation including beer taxes: 67,644,465 # obs in estimation including beer taxes: 64,013,352 # obs in estimation including beer taxes: 49,787,719 Note: 1. Models include covariates such as mothers’ educational attainments, race/ethnic group, marital status and income per capita. All taxes and prices are in cents and adjusted to CPI 1982-1984. 2. In all models, state- and year-fixed effects are included. Marginal effects are reported with state-year clustered errors underneath in the parentheses. *** significance at 1% level, ** significance at 5% level, and * significant at 10% level. 3. The number of observations regarding to models including taxes on beer, wine and liquor, respectively, are as follow: Beer tax Wine tax Liquor tax Models on birth weight, LBW and ELBW 67,644,465 63,964,676 497,693,317 Models on APGAR scores 52,086,168 48,420,369 34,284,469