TY  - JOUR
AU  - Markowitz,Sara
AU  - Grossman,Michael
TI  - The Effects of Alcohol Regulation on Physical Child Abuse
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 6629
PY  - 1998
Y2  - July 1998
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6629
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6629.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Sara Markowitz
Department of Economics
Emory University
1602 Fishburne Dr.
Atlanta, GA 30322
Tel: (404) 712-8167
E-Mail: sara.markowitz@emory.edu

Michael Grossman
Ph.D. Program in Economics
City University of New York Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue, 5th Floor
New York, NY  10016-4309
Tel: 212/817-7959
Fax: 212/817-1597
E-Mail: mgrossman@gc.cuny.edu
AB  - The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of alcohol regulation on physical child abuse.  Given the established relationship between alcohol consumption and violence, the principal hypothesis to be tested is that an increase in the price of alcohol will lead to a reduction in the incidence of violence.  We also examine the effects of measures of the ease of obtaining alcohol, illegal drug prices, and the socio-demographic characteristics of the parent on the incidence of child abuse.  Data on violence come from the 1976 and 1985 Physical Violence in American Families surveys.  We estimate a reduced form model where violence is affected by the state excise tax rate on beer and other regulatory variables, and a structural model where violence is determined partly by consumption.  Both equations are estimated separately for mothers and fathers. Results indicate that increases in the beer tax may decrease the incidence of violence committed by females but not by males. This is consistent with our second finding that violence by females increases with alcohol consumption while violence by males is not sensitive to changes in consumption.
ER  -