Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T09:26:13.812Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Alcohol Consumption in the United States: Past, Present, and Future Trends

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 September 2018

James Fogarty
Affiliation:
Agricultural and Resource Economics, School of Agriculture and Environment, University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley WA 6009, Australia; e-mail: [email protected].
Derby Voon
Affiliation:
Agricultural and Resource Economics, School of Agriculture and Environment, University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley WA 6009, Australia; e-mail: [email protected].

Abstract

This research examines long-run changes in alcohol consumption patterns for the United States, at the state level, and presents forecasts for per capita consumption of beer, wine, and spirits developed using the ARIMA methodology. The evidence is then presented on the extent of convergence in consumption through time. This evidence shows that from the 1970s through the early 2000s, a pattern of convergence in both the level of consumption and the consumption mix was evident, but since the early 2000s, and unlike the pattern observed globally, there has been a reversal of this trend. The changes in consumption through time are illustrated via ternary plots. Bayesian estimation methods are used to formally describe changes in historical consumption patterns and to investigate the impact of policy settings on consumption forecasts. There were no systematic correlations found between alcohol policy settings and forecast future consumption changes, or tax rate levels and forecast consumption changes. (JEL Classifications: D12, I18, L66)

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © American Association of Wine Economists 2018 

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

The authors would like to thank Kym Anderson for suggestions, an anonymous referee, and the editorial team at JWE.

References

Aitchison, J. (1982). The statistical analysis of compositional data. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B (Methodological), 44(2), 139177.Google Scholar
Aitchison, J. (2003). The Statistical Analysis of Compositional Data. Caldwell, NJ: Blackburn Press.Google Scholar
Aizenman, J., and Brooks, E. (2008). Globalization and taste convergence: The cases of wine and beer. Review of International Economics, 16(2), 217233.Google Scholar
Anderson, K. (2014). Changing varietal distinctiveness of the world's wine regions: Evidence from a new global database. Journal of Wine Economics, 9(3), 249272.Google Scholar
Anderson, P., Chisholm, D., and Fuhr, D. C. (2009). Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of policies and programmes to reduce the harm caused by alcohol. Lancet, 373(9682), 22342246.Google Scholar
Berger, D. E., and Snortum, J. R. (1985). Alcoholic beverage preferences of drinking-driving violators. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 46(3), 232239.Google Scholar
Burton, R., Henn, C., Lavoie, D., O'Connor, R., Perkins, C., et al. (2017). A rapid evidence review of the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of alcohol control policies: An English perspective. Lancet, 389(10078), 15581580.Google Scholar
Cohen, D. A., Mason, K., and Farley, T. A. (2004). Beer consumption and premature mortality in Louisiana: An ecologic analysis. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 65(3), 398403.Google Scholar
Colen, L., and Swinnen, J. (2016). Economic growth, globalisation and beer consumption. Journal of Agricultural Economics, 67(1), 186207.Google Scholar
Colón, I., and Cutter, H. S., (1983). The relationship of beer consumption and state alcohol and motor vehicle policies to fatal accidents.” Journal of Safety Research, 14(2), 8389.Google Scholar
Elder, R. W., Lawrence, B., Ferguson, A., Naimi, T. S., et al. (2010). The effectiveness of tax policy interventions for reducing excessive alcohol consumption and related harms. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 38(2), 217229.Google Scholar
Freeman, D. G. (2011). Beer in good times and bad: A US state-level analysis of economic conditions and alcohol consumption. Journal of Wine Economics, 6(2), 231251.Google Scholar
Gruenewald, P. J., and Ponicki, W. R. (1995). The relationship of the retail availability of alcohol and alcohol sales to alcohol-related traffic crashes. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 27(2), 249259.Google Scholar
Hamilton, N. (2016). Ggtern: An Extension to ‘Ggplot2’, for the Creation of Ternary Diagrams. R package version 2.2.1. CRAN. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=ggtern.Google Scholar
Holmes, A. J., and Anderson, K. (2017). Convergence in national alcohol consumption patterns: New global indicators. Journal of Wine Economics, 12(2), 117148.Google Scholar
Holmes, J., Meier, P. S., Booth, A., Guo, Y., et al. (2012). The temporal relationship between per capita alcohol consumption and harm: A systematic review of time lag specifications in aggregate time series analyses. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 123(1), 714.Google Scholar
Hyndman, R. J. (2017). forecast: Forecasting Functions for Time Series and Linear Models. R package version 8.2. Available at http://pkg.robjhyndman.com/forecast.Google Scholar
Hyndman, R. J., and Khandakar, Y. (2008). Automatic time series forecasting: The forecast package for R. Journal of Statistical Software, 26(3), 122.Google Scholar
Kerr, W. C., and Ye, Y. (2011). Beverage-specific mortality relationships in United States population data. Contemporary Drug Problems, 38(4), 561578.Google Scholar
Kruschke, J. K. (2013). Bayesian estimation supersedes the T test. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 142(2), 573603.Google Scholar
Kruschke, J. K., and Meredith, M. (2017). BEST: Bayesian Estimation Supersedes the t-Test. R package version 0.5.0. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=BEST.Google Scholar
Kwiatkowski, D., Phillips, P., Schmidt, P., and Shin, Y. (1992). Testing the null hypothesis of stationarity against the alternative of a unit root: How sure are we that economic time series have a unit root? Journal of Econometrics, 54(1–3), 159178.Google Scholar
LaVallee, R. A., Kim, T., and Yi, H. (2014). Surveillance Report# 98: Apparent Per Capita Alcohol Consumption: National, State, and Regional Trends, 1977–2012. US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). Available at https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/surveillance98/cons12.htm.Google Scholar
Mills, T. (2018). Is There Convergence in National Alcohol Consumption Patters Evidence from a Compositional Time Series Approach? Journal of Wine Economics, 13(1), 9298.Google Scholar
Naimi, T. S., Brewer, R. D., Miller, J. W., Okoro, C., et al. (2007). What do binge drinkers drink?: Implications for alcohol control policy. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 33(3), 188193.Google Scholar
Naimi, T. S., Siegel, M., DeJong, W., O'Doherty, W., et al. (2015). beverage-and brand-specific binge alcohol consumption among underage youth in the US. Journal of Substance Use, 20(5), 333339.Google Scholar
Naimi, T. S., Blanchette, J., Xuan, Z., and Chaloupka, F. J. (2018). Erosion of state alcohol excise taxes in the United States. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 79(1), 4348.Google Scholar
Nelson, J. P. (2013). Robust demand elasticities for wine and distilled spirits: Meta-analysis with corrections for outliers and publication bias. Journal of Wine Economics, 12(2), 117148.Google Scholar
Ponicki, W. R., and Gruenewald, P. (2006). The impact of alcohol taxation on liver cirrhosis mortality. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 67(6), 934938.Google Scholar
Roizen, R., Kerr, W. C., and Fillmore, K. M. (1999). Cirrhosis mortality and per capita consumption of distilled spirits, United States, 1949–1994: Trend analysis. Western Journal of Medicine, 171(2), 8387.Google Scholar
Sacks, J. J., Gonzales, K. R., Bouchery, E. E., Tomedi, L. E., et al. (2015). 2010 national and state costs of excessive alcohol consumption. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 49(5), e73e79.Google Scholar
Sacks, J. J., Roeber, J., Bouchery, E. E., Gonzales, K. R., et al. (2013). State costs of excessive alcohol consumption, 2006. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 45(4), 474485.Google Scholar
Siegel, M. B., Naimi, T. S., Cremeens, J. L., and Nelson, D. E. (2011). Alcoholic beverage preferences and associated drinking patterns and risk behaviors among high school youth. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 40(4), 419426.Google Scholar
Smith, D. E., and Solgaard, H. S. (2000). the dynamics of shifts in European alcoholic drinks consumption. Journal of International Consumer Marketing, 12(3), 85109.Google Scholar
Ye, Y., and Kerr, W. C. (2011). Alcohol and liver cirrhosis mortality in the United States: Comparison of methods for the analyses of time-series panel data models. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 35(1), 108115.Google Scholar