Your significant other may also try and make up excuses for your drinking or improper conduct at social functions. This can be a heavy burden for them to carry and may place a distance between their friends and family as well. Whether happy hours with coworkers, a glass of wine with dinner, a beer or two to take the edge off of a long day, or late-night partying with friends—enjoying adult beverages is a proverbial rite of passage amongst Americans.
Data Extraction and Additional Data Sources
- Furthermore, intangible costs were estimated in very different ways, again prohibiting meta-analytical aggregation.
- The majority of the article then focuses on studies investigating the effects of prices (or taxes) on alcohol use and abuse and related adverse consequences (for additional reviews, see Chaloupka 2002; Chaloupka et al. 1998, 2002; Cook and Moore 2000, 2002; Wagenaar et al. 2010).
- The calculation of weights started at the lowest level of costs (for a definition of cost levels, see above).
- Subsequent studies using updated panel data and robust specifications consistently confirmed the conclusion that higher taxes and prices significantly reduce drinking and driving (Chaloupka et al. 1993; Ruhm 1996; Sloan et al. 1994).
Adjusting for omission of cost components, the economic costs of alcohol consumption were estimated to amount to 1306 Int$ per adult (95% CI 873–1738), or 2.6% (95% CI 2.0–3.1%) of the GDP. About one-third of costs (38.8%) were incurred through direct costs, while the majority of costs were due to losses in productivity (61.2%). A systematic review and meta-analyses were conducted for studies reporting costs from alcohol consumption for the years 2000 and later, using the EMBASE and MEDLINE databases. Cost estimates were converted into 2019 international dollars (Int$) per adult and into percentage of gross domestic product (GDP).
In summary, non–tax-related State regulations that may directly or indirectly affect alcohol prices, drinking, and its consequences have been eroded in recent years, in part because of limited empirical evidence on their impact. The resulting further relaxation of these types of State regulations can contribute substantially to additional reductions in the real prices of alcoholic beverages, increased drinking, and greater alcohol-related harm. Studies addressing these issues are warranted and will greatly enhance understanding of the impact of changes in these policies on prices of alcoholic beverages. In recent years, some large alcoholic-beverage retailers have filed a couple of lawsuits against these non–tax-related State regulations over their perceived anticompetitive effects. For example, in Maryland, a large regional retailer has challenged the State’s ban on quantity discounts for wine and spirits at the wholesale level and the related price post-and-hold requirements (TFWS vs. Schaefer et al.) (Chaloupka 2010). In both cases, the States have adopted a defense based on the 21st Amendment to oppose these legal challenges, arguing that the regulations were consistent with the State public health interests by reducing excessive drinking.
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)
These investigators failed to detect a significant relationship between tax rates and drinking-and-driving rates. Likewise, Dee (1999) and Young and Likens (2000) found that there was little relationship between beer taxes and motor-vehicle fatalities, and the significance of the relationship was very sensitive to the specification of regression models. As one explanation for these inconsistencies, Mast and colleagues (1999) argued that the minimum legal drinking ages had been higher in the later years of data collection, which means that beer taxes had become a smaller part of the “full price” of teen drinking. Another potential explanation comes from the distinction between alcohol-related and non–alcohol-related traffic fatalities.
Pogue whats in whippets and Sgontz (1989) showed that the “best-guess” estimate based on their model was 51 percent of the net price of the beverage (i.e., price excluding tax), whereas Kenkel (1996) estimated the optimal tax should be around 106 percent of the net price. Two other studies (Manning et al. 1989; Saffer and Chaloupka 1994) suggested that the excise tax rates during their study period would have had to be doubled to reach the optimal level. Given that State and Federal taxes generally have not kept pace with inflation since these studies were done (see figures 1 and and2),2), the “optimal” tax likely would have to be even higher today. In addition to tax-related polices, several other regulations also may directly or indirectly affect the prices of alcoholic beverages. These options include, but are not limited to, regulations on wholesale and retail distribution, bans on price-related promotions, and (targeted) minimum-pricing policies.
There are also financial downsides to regular drinking, especially if one has a habit of drinking frequently and/or in large quantities. We decided to take a closer look at how United States cities compare when it comes to drinking habits and the cost of these over a lifetime. To do so, we first looked at City-Data for the number of drinks each city’s inhabitants drink in a week on average. Using CDC data on the average life expectancy in each state, we then found the number of drinks consumed over a lifetime on average. Finally, we used Expatistan to find the average cost of alcoholic drinks in each city in order to determine the cost of drinking over various periods of time, including a full lifetime (age 21 and up).
Over the alcohol storage ideas past three decades, economists and others have devoted considerable effort to assessing the impact of alcoholic-beverage taxes and prices on alcohol consumption and its related adverse consequences. Federal and State excise taxes have increased only rarely and, when adjusted for inflation, have declined significantly over the years, as have overall prices for alcoholic beverages. Likewise, price increases can help reduce the risk for adverse consequences of alcohol consumption and abuse, including drinking and driving, alcohol-involved crimes, liver cirrhosis and other alcohol-related mortality, risky sexual behavior and its consequences, and poor school performance among youth. All of these findings indicate that increases in alcoholic-beverage taxes could be a highly effective option for reducing alcohol abuse and its consequences.
The Effects of Prices on Alcohol Use and Related Consequences
Online tools such as an alcohol spending calculator can be helpful in seeing how much you may be spending by drinking daily. For example, if you drink 7 days a week and 5-6 beers a day at around $24 for a 12 pack of domestic beer, you’d be spending around $120 on beer alone in a week. Or $480 a month and $5,760 a year—which would not even account for the times you go out and drink at bars and restaurants. It may also begin to affect children as they may experience neglect or physical or emotional abuse from a parent struggling with alcoholism. This can range from missed events, such as soccer games or birthday parties, to verbal or physical violence at home. Family members dealing with alcoholism may also be less fully present in their day-to-day due to frequent hangovers or other adverse effects that may cause them to disengage.
In fact, our findings suggest that current cost estimates are largely unrelated to the underlying alcohol exposure involved, and rather are driven by differences in methodology or by country-specific factors, rendering cross-country comparisons rather meaningless. Lastly, we examined the link of the two cost indicators with the annual amount of pure alcohol intake (in litres) per capita and per drinker as two different indicators for population alcohol exposure as a proxy for the causal driver for incurred costs (for total, direct, and indirect costs). 4 (see ESM 1), alcohol exposure was not clearly linked to both cost indicators, suggesting other unobserved factors to be more relevant for incurred costs than alcohol exposure itself. However, numerous studies over the last two decades using a variety of econometric and statistical methods and different types of data have confirmed that higher prices substantially can reduce alcohol use (and abuse) and related adverse consequences even among heavier drinkers. Second, we found no clear link of alcohol exposure indicators to total costs; however, the relationship between alcohol exposure and adverse outcomes is more complex than one might initially assume.
Other Policies Affecting Alcoholic-Beverage Prices
Many studies have shown that in addition to reducing alcohol use and abuse, increased prices also decrease the adverse consequences resulting from alcohol use and abuse. Extensive literature exists of studies assessing the effects of changes in price on the levels of alcohol use and abuse. Because of the vast amount of literature available, this review focuses mainly fun activities for substance abuse groups on findings from published meta-analyses and reviews and only uses individual studies for illustration, where relevant. We used each state’s average life expectancy to find the years of drinking (age 21 and over), then compared this with each city’s weekly drinking habits and cost of alcoholic drinks. The three cities that spend the most — New York, NY, Minneapolis, MN, and Miami, FL — all spend $116,000 or more on drinks over a lifetime. Those that spend the least — Birmingham, AL, New Orleans, LA, and Memphis, TN — each spend $57,000 or more.
This study not only summarized the total economic costs of alcohol consumption but also systematically quantified the contribution of various key cost components. Furthermore, this study is the first to overcome the limitations of previous reviews (e.g. Rehm et al. and Thavorncharoensap [8, 9]) related to methodological differences in cost estimation, thus eliminating a key barrier to compare costs across studies and countries. Alcohol use has been identified as a major risk factor for burden of disease [1–3], leading to the introduction of reduction goals in major UN and other international frameworks, such as the Sustainable Development Goals [4, 5]. However, alcohol consumption differs from many other risk factors, as attributable health burden is not restricted to the drinker alone but also extends to others, including those who have abstained from alcohol during their lifetime (e.g. via drunk driving or maternal alcohol consumption [6]).
This population is of particular relevance because they exhibit relatively high levels of binge drinking and of alcohol-related problems; moreover, there seems to be great potential for using tax and price policies to prevent underage drinking. Using data from early waves of National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, Grossman and colleagues (1987) and Coate and Grossman (1988) were the first to examine the impact of price on alcohol use among adolescents. These investigators found that price increases led to larger reductions in the fractions of heavy and fairly heavy adolescent drinkers than in the fraction of light drinkers.
When you look at how much drinking alcohol can affect your life, especially for those who are potentially abusing it or suffering from alcoholism, it may be time to ask yourself, “Is it worth it? ” Your health, the relationships you have, your finances, and your career goals may all be affected and at the end of the day, you have to decide what you want your future to look like. 3License States are States that adopt a mixed set of regulations to influence the extent of competition in alcoholic beverage markets rather than directly control distribution and sale of these beverages. Please refer to the section, Other Polices Affecting Alcoholic-Beverage Prices, for a detailed discussion on license States. The identified cost studies were mainly conducted in high-income settings, with high heterogeneity in the employed methodology. Accounting for some methodological variations, our findings demonstrate that alcohol use continues to incur a high level of cost to many societies.
On the other hand, Birckmayer and Hemenway (1999) failed to find an association between beer tax and suicides among youth. Finally, Yamasaki and colleagues (2005) demonstrated that increases in alcohol taxes correlated significantly with suicides in male but not in female subjects. These inconsistencies regarding the relationship between prices of alcoholic beverages and suicide may result from measurement errors in the dependent variable, because not all suicides were alcohol related. In fact, according to a meta-analysis by Smith and colleagues (1999), blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) indicative of intoxication (BAC more than or equal to 100 mg/dL) were found in a much smaller percentage of suicide cases (i.e., 22.7 percent) than of homicide cases (31.5 percent). In general, a meta-analysis based on 11 independent estimates from four studies indicated that the impact of prices of alcoholic beverages on suicide only was marginally significant (Wagenaar et al. 2010).
