A note on `Economic conditions and alcohol problems'

Does Drinking Really Decrease in Bad Times?

“…Thus, these models approximately correspond to previous research (e.g. Ruhm, 1995;Freeman, 1999) examining the macroeconomic variation in state alcohol sales or traffic fatalities with aggregate data. Our findings once again indicate a procyclical pattern of conditional drinking and possibly drunk-driving combined with little change in drinking participation, suggesting that individual and aggregate data yield consistent predictions.…”

“…5 One reason is that incomes grow when the economy expands and alcohol is a normal good. Freeman (1999) raises concern that the data used by Ruhm may be non-stationary. Nevertheless, using an expanded data set (covering the 50 states and District of Columbia for the 1970-1995 period) that is rendered stationary by using growth rates instead of levels, he confirms the procyclical variation of alcohol consumption.…”

Economic Expansions Are Unhealthy: Evidence from Microdata

“…6 Third, the higher incomes associated with good economic times may lead to increases in some risky activities (e.g. drinking, driving, or skiing), raising deaths from external causes such as motor vehicle fatalities (Evans and Graham, 1988;Ruhm, 1995;Freeman, 1999) and possibly elevating related non-fatal accidents and health problems.…”

Meta-Analysis of Alcohol Price and Income Elasticities – With Corrections for Publication Bias

“…However, his meta-regressions pool all estimates, so marginal effects for various covariates are uniform across beverages. Gallet includes individuallevel survey studies as well as aggregate studies in the analysis, but many survey studies report tax elasticities rather than price elasticities e.g., [8][9][10]. Price and tax elasticities are not comparable unless tax elasticities are transformed [ [11], p. 72].…”