The specific aims of this project are to investigate empirically the effects of various Federal and state government policies to regulate the consumption of alcohol and the amount of drunken driving in the U.S. The actual and potential regulatory variables that will be emphasized pertain to alcohol excise tax rates, legal drinking ages, penalties for drunken driving, and statutes that increase the certainly of purnishment for this offense. The principle outcome measures will be motor vehicle accident mortality rates in the United States by age, state, and year for the peroid from 1975 through 1988. These will be taken from the Fatal Accident Reporting System maintained by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation. Age- state- and year-specific total motor vehicle fatality rates and nighttime fatality rates will be examined. The latter measure will be employed since nighttime accidents are more likely to involve intoxicated drivers. Moreover, for the subset of states that routinely test the blood-alcohol levels of at least 80 percent of all fatally injured drivers, age-specific intoxicated driver fatality rates will be considered. Secondary outcome measures in the research will be per capita consumption of distilled spirits, beer, and wine in the U.S. during the post World War II period.
The specific aims of the research will be achieved by estimating multivarite motor vehicle moratlity rate equations and demand functions for spirits, beer, and wine. Some specific questions that we will address are: How sensitive are motor vehicle mortality rates of different age groups to differences in state alcoholic beverage prices or excise tax rates? Do the estimate price/tax effects differ by age? Are drunken drivers more responsive to an increase in the certainty of punishment for driving while intoxicated than to an increase in the penalty for this offense? Is the recent rise in the Federal excise tax on distilled spirits likely to have a substantial impact on alcohol consumption and the motor vehicle death rate? Or will a reductoin in the consumption of distilled spirtis be offset by increases in the consumption of beer and wine?
| Chaloupka, Frank J; Grossman, Michael; Saffer, Henry (2002) The effects of price on alcohol consumption and alcohol-related problems. Alcohol Res Health 26:22-34 |
