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Alcohol consumption and its impact on the risk of high blood pressure in R ussia
Author(s) -
Akhmedjonov Alisher,
Suvankulov Farrukh
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
drug and alcohol review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.018
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1465-3362
pISSN - 0959-5236
DOI - 10.1111/j.1465-3362.2012.00521.x
Subject(s) - consumption (sociology) , endogeneity , environmental health , alcohol , alcohol consumption , blood pressure , government (linguistics) , medicine , causality (physics) , psychological intervention , economics , psychiatry , econometrics , chemistry , sociology , social science , biochemistry , linguistics , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics
and Aims This study aims to examine the causal effect of alcohol consumption on the risk of high blood pressure in R ussia. Design and Methods Using data from the R ussian L ongitudinal M onitoring S urvey, we estimated the influence of alcohol consumption on high blood pressure, controlling for social and other factors related to alcohol use. To address the issue of causality, we instrumented alcohol consumption by the number of frequent alcohol drinkers in the household. Results We found that frequent consumption of vodka and beer has an adverse impact on health. In particular, frequent vodka consumption increases the likelihood of high blood pressure by 2.88% while frequent beer consumption increases it by 2.06%. Controlling for the endogeneity of frequent alcohol consumption using the instrumental variable method produces an even larger effect for frequent vodka consumption, with a marginal effect of 7.23%. Discussion and Conclusion Prevention policies as well as government programs aimed at treating alcohol‐related health outcomes should take into consideration the significant adverse effect of alcohol consumption on high blood pressure. It is also recommended that policy interventions aimed to address alcohol addiction issues in R ussia explicitly differentiate between vodka and beer drinkers.