Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-27gpq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-18T18:04:23.624Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Alcohol Consumption and Political Ideology: What's Party Got to Do with It?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2013

Pavel A. Yakovlev*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics and Statistics, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA 15282
Walter P. Guessford
Affiliation:
Department of Economics and Statistics, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA 15282, e-mail: guessfordw@duq.edu.

Abstract

Recent research in psychology and sociology has established a connection between political beliefs and unhealthy behaviors such as excessive alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drug consumption. In this study, we estimate the relationship between political ideology and the demand for beer, wine, and spirits using a longitudinal panel of fifty U.S. states from 1952 to 2010. Controlling for various socioeconomic factors and unobserved heterogeneity, we find that when a state becomes more liberal politically, its consumption of beer and spirits rises, while its consumption of wine may fall. Our findings suggest that political beliefs are correlated with the demand for alcohol. (JEL Classifications: D3, D12, I1)

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © American Association of Wine Economists 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

We thank an anonymous referee and the faculty members at Duquesne University for constructive comments and suggestions.

References

Arrow, K. (1963). Uncertainty and the welfare economics of medical care. American Economic Review, 53, 941973.Google Scholar
Baker, T. (1996). On the genealogy of moral hazard. Texas Law Review, 75, 237292.Google Scholar
Beck, N., and Katz, J.N. (1995). What to do (and not to do) with time-series cross-section data. American Political Science Review, 89, 634647.Google Scholar
Bell, A.M. (2002). Locally interdependent preferences in a general equilibrium environment. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 47, 309333.Google Scholar
Berry, W.D., Ringquist, E.J., Fording, R.C., and Hanson, R.L. (1998). Measuring citizen and government ideology in the American states, 1960–93. American Journal of Political Science, 42, 327348.Google Scholar
Berry, W.D., Ringquist, E.J., Fording, R.C., Hanson, R.L., and Klarner, C.E. (2010). Measuring citizen and government ideology in the U.S. states: A re-appraisal. State Politics and Policy Quarterly, 10, 117135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Binmore, K. (1998). Just Playing: Game Theory and the Social Contract II. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Binmore, K. (2005). Natural Justice. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Binmore, K. (2007). The origins of fair play. Proceedings of the British Academy, 151, 151193.Google Scholar
Bouchery, E.E., Harwood, H.J., Sacks, J.J., Simon, C.J., and Brewer, D.B. (2011). Economic costs of excessive alcohol consumption in the U.S., 2006. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 41, 516524.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bowles, S. (1998). The cultural consequences of markets and other economic institutions. Journal of Economic Literature, 36, 75111.Google Scholar
Brewers' Almanac (2012). United States Brewers' Association, United States Brewers Foundation, Beer Institute.Google Scholar
Brown, T., Parks, G., Zimmerman, R., and Phillips, C. (2001). The role of religion in predicting adolescent alcohol use and problem drinking. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 62, 383399.Google Scholar
Caprara, G.V., Barbaranelli, C., and Zimbardo, P.G. (1999). Personality profiles and political parties. Political Psychology, 20, 175197.Google Scholar
Chaloupka, F.J., Grossman, M., and Saffer, H. (2002). The effects of price on alcohol consumption and alcohol-related problems. Alcohol Research & Health, 26, 2234.Google ScholarPubMed
Chaloupka, F.J., Saffer, H., and Grossman, M. (1993). Alcohol-control policies and motor vehicle fatalities. Journal of Legal Studies, 22, 161186.Google Scholar
Coate, D., and Grossman, M. (1988). Effects of alcoholic beverage prices and legal drinking ages on youth alcohol use. Journal of Law and Economics, 31, 145–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cockerham, W. (1999). Health and Social Change in Russia and Eastern Europe. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cockerham, W. (2005). Health lifestyle theory and the convergence of agency and structure. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 46, 5167.Google Scholar
Cockerham, W., Snead, M., and DeWaal, D. (2002). Health lifestyles in Russia and the socialist heritage. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 43, 4255.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cockerham, W., Hinote, B.P., Cockerham, G.B., and Abbott, P. (2006). Health lifestyles and political ideology in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. Social Science & Medicine, 62, 17991809.Google Scholar
Colen, L., and Swinnen, J. (2011). Beer drinking nations: The determinants of global beer consumption. AAWE Working Paper no. 270.Google Scholar
Conway, L.G., Sexton, S.M., and Tweed, R.G. (2006). Collectivism and governmentally initiated restrictions: A cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis across nations and within a nation. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 37, 123.Google Scholar
Cook, P.J. (2007). Paying the Tab: The Costs and Benefits of Alcohol Control. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Dickson, E.S. (2006). Rational choice epistemology and belief formation in mass politics. Journal of Theoretical Politics, 18, 454497.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dietrich, F., and List, C. (2012). Where do preferences come from? International Journal of Game Theory, 42, 613637.Google Scholar
Dmitrieva, E. (2005). The Russian health care experiment: Transition of the health care system and rethinking medical sociology. In Cockerham, W. (ed.), The Blackwell companion to medical sociology. Oxford: Blackwell, 320333.Google Scholar
Driscoll, J.C., and Kraay, A.C. (1998). Consistent covariance matrix estimation with spatially dependent panel data. Review of Economics and Statistics, 80, 549560.Google Scholar
Eidelman, S., Crandall, C.S., Goodman, J.A., and Blanchar, J.C. (2012). Low-effort thought promotes political conservatism. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 808820.Google Scholar
Farrell, S., Manning, W.G., and Finch, M.D. (2003). Alcohol dependence and the price of alcoholic beverages. Journal of Health Economics, 22, 117–47.Google Scholar
Fogarty, J. (2010). The demand for beer, wine, and spirits: A survey of the literature. Journal of Economic Surveys, 24, 428478.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franco, A., Alvarez-Dardet, C., and Ruiz, M. (2004). Effect of democracy on health: Ecological study. British Medical Journal, 329, 14211422.Google Scholar
Freeman, D.G. (2000). Alternative panel estimates of alcohol demand, taxation, and the business cycle. Southern Economic Journal, 67, 325344.Google Scholar
Freeman, D.G. (2011). Beer in good times and bad: A U.S. state-level analysis of economic conditions and alcohol consumption. Journal of Wine Economics, 6, 231251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frohlich, K., Corin, E., and Potvin, L. (2001). A theoretical proposal for the relationship between context and disease. Sociology of Health and Illness, 23, 776797.Google Scholar
Giesbrecht, N., Greenfield, T.K., Anglin, L., and Johnson, S. (2004). Changing the price of alcohol in the United States: Perspectives from the alcohol industry, public health, and research. Contemporary Drug Problems, 31, 711736.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graham, J., Haidt, J., and Nosek, B.A. (2009). Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96, 10291046.Google Scholar
Granö, N., Virtanen, M., Vahtera, J., Elovainio, M., and Kivimäki, M. (2004). Impulsivity as a predictor of smoking and alcohol consumption. Personality and Individual Differences, 37, 16931700.Google Scholar
Grau, E., and Ortet, G. (1999). Personality traits and alcohol consumption in a sample of non-alcoholic women. Personality and Individual Differences, 27(6), 10571066.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, D., Palmquist, B., and Schickler, E. (2002). Partisan Hearts and Minds. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Gruber, J. (2007). Public Finance and Public Policy. New York: Worth.Google Scholar
Hartley, K. (1985). Exogenous factors in economic theory: Neo-classical economics. Social Science Information, 24, 457483.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodson, G., and Busseri, M.A. (2012). Lower cognitive ability predicts greater prejudice through right-wing ideology and low intergroup contact. Psychological Science, 23, 187195.Google Scholar
Hofstede, G. (1984). The culture relativity of the life concept. Academy of Management, 9, 389398.Google Scholar
Jost, J.T., Frederico, C.M., and Napier, J.L. (2009). Political ideology: Its structure, functions, and electives affinities. Annual Review of Psychology, 60, 307337.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kacen, J.K., and Lee, J.A. (2002). The influence of culture on consumer impulsive buying behavior. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 12, 163176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kalt, J., and Zupan, M. (1984). Capture and ideology in the economic theory of politics. American Economic Review, 74, 279300.Google Scholar
Kanazawa, S., and Hellberg, J. (2010). Intelligence and substance use. Review of General Psychology, 14, 382396.Google Scholar
Kau, J., and Rubin, P. (1979). Self-interest, ideology, and logrolling in congressional voting. Journal of Law and Economics, 22, 365384.Google Scholar
Kenkel, D.S. (1996). New estimates of the optimal tax on alcohol. Economic Inquiry, 34, 296319.Google Scholar
Kerr, W.C., Greenfield, T.K., Bond, J., Ye, Y., and Rehm, J. (2004). Age, period and cohort influences on beer, wine and spirits consumption trends in the U.S. National Alcohol Surveys. Addiction, 99, 11111120.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Manning, W.G., Blumberg, L., and Moulton, L.H. (1995). The demand for alcohol: The differential response to price. Journal of Health Economics, 14, 123–48.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Markowitz, S., Kaestner, R., and Grossman, M. (2005). An investigation of the effects of alcohol consumption and alcohol policies on youth risky sexual behaviors. American Economic Review, 95(2), 263266.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McKee, M., Shkolnikov, V., and Leon, D. (2001). Alcohol is implicated in the fluctuations in cardiovascular disease in Russia since the 1980s. Annals of Epidemiology, 11(1), 16.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Meyer, B. (1990). Unemployment insurance and unemployment spells. Econometrica, 58, 757782.Google Scholar
Michael, R.T., and Becker, G.S. (1973). On the new theory of consumer behavior. Swedish Journal of Economics, 75, 378396.Google Scholar
Mooney, C. (2012). The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Napier, J.L., and Jost, J.T. (2008). Why are conservatives happier than liberals? Association for Psychological Science, 19(6), 565572.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nelson, J. (2003). Advertising bans, monopoly, and alcohol demand: Testing for substitution effects using panel data. Review of Industrial Organization, 22, 125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newhouse, J.P., and the Insurance Experiment Group. (1993). Free for All? Lessons from the RAND Health Insurance Experiment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
North, D.C. (1996). Economic performance through time. American Economic Review, 84, 359368.Google Scholar
Ogwang, T., and Cho, D.I. (2009). Economic determinants of the consumption of alcoholic beverages in Canada: A panel data analysis. Empirical Economics, 37, 599613.Google Scholar
Peltzman, S. (1975). The Effects of automobile safety regulation. Journal of Political Economy, 83, 677725.Google Scholar
Ponicki, W.R. (2004). Statewide Availability Data System II: 1933–2003. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Research Center Grant P60-AA006282–23. Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, Prevention Research Center, Berkeley, CA.Google Scholar
Poole, K.T. (1998). Recovering an issue space from a set of issue scales. American Journal of Political Science, 42, 954993.Google Scholar
Ramanathan, S., and Menon, G. (2006). Time-varying effects of chronic hedonic goals on impulsive behavior. Journal of Marketing Research, 43, 628641.Google Scholar
Ramful, P., and Zhao, X. (2006). Heterogeneity in alcohol consumption: The case of beer, wine and spirits in Australia. Economic Record, 84, 207222.Google Scholar
Ruhm, C.J. (1996). Alcohol policies and highway vehicle fatalities. Journal of Health Economics, 15, 435454.Google Scholar
Ruhm, C.J., Jones, A.S., Kerr, W.C., Greenfield, T.K., Terza, J.V., Pandian, R.S., and McGeary, K.A. (2011). What U.S. data should be used to measure the price elasticity of demand for alcohol? NBER Working Paper No. 17578.Google Scholar
Savageau, D., and Loftus, G. (1997). Places rated almanac: Your guide to finding the best places to live in North America. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Shim, S., and Maggs, J. (2005). A cognitive and behavioral hierarchical decision-making model of college students' alcohol consumption. Psychology & Marketing, 22, 649668.Google Scholar
Shkolnikov, V., and Meslé, F. (1996). The Russian epidemiological crisis as mirrored by mortality patterns. In DeVanzo, J. (ed.), Russia's demographic crisis. Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 113167.Google Scholar
Shkolnikov, V., and Nemstov, A. (1997). The anti-alcohol campaign and variations in Russian mortality. In Bobadilla, J., Costello, C., & Mitchell, E. (eds.), Premature mortality in the new independent states. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 239416.Google Scholar
Shkolnikov, V., McKee, M., and Leon, D. (2001). Changes in life expectancy in Russia in the mid-1990s. Lancet, 357, 917921.Google Scholar
Smith, G. (2004). Lifestyle, health, and health promotion in Nazi Germany. British Medical Journal, 329, 14241425.Google Scholar
Triandis, H.C., and Gelfand, M.J. (1998). Converging measurements of horizontal and vertical individualism and collectivism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 118128.Google Scholar
Vandello, A.J., and Cohen, D. (1999). Patterns of individualism and collectivism across the United States. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 279292.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verba, S., and Orren, G.R. (1985). Equality in America: The View from the Top. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Vohs, K.D., and Faber, R.J. (2007). Spent resources: Self-regulatory resource availability affects impulse buying. Journal of Consumer Research, 33, 537547.Google Scholar
Washington, E. (2008). Female socialization: How daughters affect their legislator fathers' voting on women's issues. American Economic Review, 98, 311332.Google Scholar
Wildavsky, A. (1987). Choosing preferences by constructing institutions: A cultural theory of preference formation. American Political Science Review, 81, 322.Google Scholar
Yakovlev, P. (2007). Ideology, shirking, and the incumbency advantage in the U.S. House of Representatives. Economics Bulletin, 4, 16.Google Scholar
Yakovlev, P. (2011). In uncertainty we trust: A median voter model with risk aversion. Financial Theory and Practice, 35, 465477.Google Scholar
Yang, S., and Allenby, G. M. (2003). Modeling interdependent consumer preferences. Journal of Marketing Research, 40, 282294.Google Scholar
Zhang, Y., and Shrum, L.J. (2009). The influence of self-construal on impulsive consumption. Journal of Consumer Research, 35, 838850.Google Scholar