The Price of Alcohol, Wife Abuse, and Husband Abuse.

• Author: Markowitz, Sara

Sara Markowitz [*]

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.

1. Introduction

   The problem of violence between spouses has been a characteristic of families for many generations. Only since the 1960s has this problem gained national attention as a serious threat to the health and welfare of women, and only since the late 1970s has the problem of violence against men gained any notoriety. Estimates show that 30 out of every 1,000 females and 45 out of every 1,000 males are victims of severe violence committed by their spouses. [1]

   Alcohol consumption has commonly been associated with incidents of spousal abuse. In reviews of the literature, Gelles and Cornell (1990) and Leonard (1993) note that virtually every study of aggression in families shows that alcohol consumption is a strong correlate of violence. In nationally representative samples, alcohol use is frequently found to accompany violence (Straus, Gelles, and Steinmetz 1980; Kantor and Straus 1987). Studies of violent families also find a similar association (Wolfgang 1958; Byles 1978). For example, in a sample of violent families, Gelles (1974) found that drinking accompanied violence in almost half of the cases. In samples of battered women, many different studies also find that the husbands had frequently been drinking prior to the assault (Walker 1979, 1984; Fagan, Stewart, and Hansen 1983). Walker (1984) interviewed 400 self-identified battered women on the drinking habits of male batterers and nonbatterers and found that 67% of male batterers were reported to frequently drink alcohol (as compared to never drinking or occasionally drinking) versus 43% of nonbatterers. Drinking by the victim is also observed in some studies of violence between spouses, although the percentage of victims reported to have been drinking prior to the attack is often much lower than the percentage of perpetrators who had been drinking (Collins 1981; Walker 1984; Bard and Zacker 1974).

   In addition to the well-established link between alcohol consumption and violence, alcohol consumption has been shown to be negatively related to the price of alcoholic beverages (see for example Kenkel 1993; Leung and Phelps 1993; Manning, Blumberg, and Moulton 1995; Grossman, Chaloupka, and Sirtalan 1998). Given these two relationships, the purpose of this paper is to examine the direct relationship between the price of alcohol and the incidence of violence. In other words, the purpose of this paper is to answer the question of whether an increase in the price of alcohol will lower violence toward spouses through lower consumption.

2. Related Studies

   There are numerous studies on domestic violence in the literature of sociology, psychology, and other disciplines. However, the topic of domestic violence is a relative newcomer to the economics literature. The most closely related studies are those on the effects of alcohol regulation on violence aimed at children by Markowitz and Grossman (1998a, 2000). These studies use the 1976 and 1985 National Family Violence Surveys and show that increasing the beer tax is an effective policy tool in reducing both the probability and frequency of violence toward children. [2] The former study looks at the 1976 cross section only, while the later study pools the two years of data and controls for state-fixed effects over time. Fixed effects are important in determining whether the effects of the state-level alcohol regulation variables in the cross sections are reflecting unobserved sentiment toward regulation and violence rather than true policy effects.

   Other notable economic studies on domestic violence include those by Long, Witte, and Karr (1983), Tauchen, Witte, and Long (1991), and Farmer and Tiefenthaler (1997). These papers focus only on wife abuse and model violence as a good that can be bought or avoided with income transfers. One drawback of these studies is that their frameworks do not allow for the effects of alcohol consumption and the determinates of consumption on violence. Secondly, the data sets used by Tauchen, Witte, and Long and Farmer and Tiefenthaler are nonrandom samples of battered women. This paper adds to the current spouse abuse literature in that it addresses both of these limitations. The analysis presented here accounts for the effects of alcohol on violence and it presents the empirical estimation using a nationally representative sample. The use of the 1985-1987 panel of the National Family Violence Survey is also novel in that it allows unobserved individual characteristics to be controlled for.

3. Analytical Framework

   The studies cited in section 1 on the link between alcohol consumption and violence do not posit a causal mechanism from alcohol to violence, rather, they highlight an association. Within this literature, there are a variety of hypotheses of why alcohol and violence are linked. One theory states that there may exist a psychopharmacological relationship in which alcohol can alter behavior by increasing excitability and/or boosting courage (see Pernanen 1981 and Fagan 1993 for a complete discussion). Under this theory, people may be more likely to commit a violent act when under the influence of alcohol than they would be otherwise. A second theory asserts that people use alcohol as an excuse for aberrant behavior. It is commonly believed that alcohol use may cause people to lose their inhibitions and/or release violent tendencies, and thus users cannot be fully blamed for their actions. In other words, drunkenness may give people an excuse for violence, despite whether or not actual pharmacological effects exist (Fagan 1990; Gelles and Cornell 1990). Finally, there is the "third factor" theory in which there exists some unknown common cause that results in both drinking and violent behaviors (Fagan 1990). These are only a few of a wide variety of possible explanations on the link bet ween alcohol consumption and violence; however, there is no agreement in the literature on the true cause of the association (see Reiss and Roth 1993 for more details).

   Given the variety of explanations for the link between alcohol consumption and violence, there are many ways in which one can model a perpetrator's choice level of violence. Two simple models are presented here. A more formal derivation of these models is outlined in Markowitz and Grossman (1998b). The first encompasses the idea that the pharmacological properties of alcohol consumption cause unplanned violence, while the second one models alcohol as a facilitator in committing planned violence. In this second version, it is assumed that alcohol lowers the costs of violence by creating an excuse for the behavior. Even though the mechanism through which alcohol promotes violence is different, both frameworks presented below result in the same estimating equation and predictions. The "third factor" theory mentioned above can be accounted for by including a variety of individual characteristics and by using a fixed-effects estimation that controls for unobserved heterogeneity across individuals.

   The first framework considers violence as a by-product of alcohol consumption. A perpetrator maximizes his or her utility, which is a function of alcohol consumption (A), violence (V), and other consumption goods (X), all of which are affected by tastes (t):

   U = U[A, V(A, t), X, t]. (1)

   Violence is present in the utility function but is not a choice variable per se. Rather, violence is an expected or unexpected consequence of alcohol consumption and may cause negative untility. [3] In effect, violence is produced by the chemical effects of alcohol consumption and by other factors that account for a person's propensity for violence. [4] These factors can be socioeconomic or demographic factors or a person's history of family violence and may be the same ones that affect the taste for alcohol consumption.

   A perpetrator will maximize utility subject to a budget constraint:

   I = PA + X, (2)

   where total income (I) is equal to the price of alcohol (P) times the amount of consumption of alcohol plus the total amount spent on other consumption. The price of other consumption is normalized to $1.00.

   Maximization will yield the following first-order conditions:

   [partial]U/[partial]A + [partial]U/[partial]V x [partial]V/[partial]A = [lambda]P, (3a)

   [partial]U/[partial]X = [lambda], (3b)

   where [lambda] is the marginal utility of income. The first-order conditions imply a demand function for alcohol that shows that consumption is a function of the price of alcohol, income, and tastes:

   A = A(I, P. t). (4)

   In choosing the level of alcohol to consume, a person will account for the effect of violence on utility if violence as a by-product is anticipated. If no violence is anticipated then the level of alcohol will be chosen without regard to the consequences of violence on utility.

   Because violence is a function of alcohol consumption, substituting the demand equation for alcohol into the violence production function gives violence as a function of the price of alcohol, income, and tastes:

   V = V(I, P, t). (5)

   By the law of downward sloping demand, increasing the price of alcohol will decrease the quantity of alcohol demanded. When the quantity of alcohol decreases, violence...