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The Price of Alcohol, Wife Abuse, and Husband Abuse
Author(s) -
Markowitz Sara
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
southern economic journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.762
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 2325-8012
pISSN - 0038-4038
DOI - 10.1002/j.2325-8012.2000.tb00337.x
Subject(s) - panel data , domestic violence , wife , alcohol , alcohol abuse , alcohol consumption , demographic economics , psychology , consumption (sociology) , social psychology , economics , poison control , injury prevention , environmental health , psychiatry , medicine , econometrics , sociology , political science , law , chemistry , social science , biochemistry
Alcohol consumption has been frequently linked to violence. This paper examines the direct relationship between the price of alcohol, which determines consumption, and violence toward husbands and wives. The data come from the 1985 cross section and the 1985‐1987 panel of the National Family Violence Survey. A reduced form violence equation is estimated, and individual‐level fixed effects are used to control for unobserved characteristics in the panel. Results indicate that an increase in the price of pure alcohol, as measured by a weighted average of the price of alcohol from beer, wine, and liquor, will reduce violence aimed at wives. The evidence on the propensity of an increase in the price of alcohol to lower violence toward husbands is mixed.