TY  - JOUR
AU  - Markowitz,Sara
TI  - The Price of Alcohol, Wife Abuse, and Husband Abuse
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 6916
PY  - 1999
Y2  - January 1999
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6916
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6916.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
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 1999-08-01
AB  - Alcohol consumption has been frequently linked to family violence.  The purpose of this paper is to examine the direct relationship between the price of alcohol, which determines consumption, and violence towards spouses.  The data come from the 1985 cross section and the 1985-1987 panel of the National Family Violence Survey.  The 1985 data are a nationally representative sample while the panel oversamples violent individuals.  Dichotomous indicators of severe violence towards wives and husbands are used.  A reduced for violence equation is estimated, and individual-level fixed effects are used to control for unobserved characteristics in the panel.  A consistent result that emerges from this paper is that an increase in the pure price of alcohol, as measured by a weighted average of the price of alcohol from beer, wine, and liquor, will serve to reduce severe violence aimed at wives.  By contrast, the evidence on the propensity of an increase in the price of alcohol to lower violence towards husbands is mixed.  When individual level characteristics are not controlled for, the price is not a predictor of violence towards men.  However, once the individual traits are controlled for, a negative relationship between the price and violence emerges.
ER  -