We have all heard that alcohol in moderation appears to offer health benefits , from reducing the risk of heart attack to even decreasing susceptibility to the common cold. And for the many people who consume alcohol, drinking sometimes has entertainment value, as well.
But I live in North Carolina, where we have some of the highest beer taxes in the nation and I still cannot buy spirits from private stores. Nationally, we hear from groups such as the American Medical Association that alcohol has many downsides, such as it gets in the way of peoples’ careers. Even Donald Trump says, “I’d like to see the lawyers start going after the alcohol companies, ’cause I think alcohol is a much greater detriment than cigarettes.”
But there’s good news for those who like drinking and want good careers: economic data shows that drinkers actually earn significantly more money than non-drinkers.
In an article in the Journal of Labor Research, co-author Bethany Peters and I looked at data on 7,500 people. We held numerous variables, such as education and age, constant in order to isolate the effects of drinking. Roughly 75 percent of adults are drinkers and 25 percent are abstainers. Holding other variables equal, we found that someone who drinks earns 10 percent more on average than someone who does not. We also found that men who reported going to a bar at least once in the last month earn an additional 7 percent. That’s 17 percent more money than people who don’t go out or drink.
Why do drinkers earn more? We believe it’s because drinkers have bigger social networks and that enables them to make more money. If drinkers know more people, they will be more likely to find a better job. In addition, drinkers also may be more likely to get along well with coworkers and clients than the person who likes to stay at home and play video games. That can explain why drinkers who drink in bars tend to earn the most.
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There’s no way to tell which is the cause and which is the effect in this kind of study. Do people who earn more drink more because they have more stressful jobs? Or do people who drink more earn more because of larger social circles? And the idea that people who don’t drink are sitting around in their basements playing video games is kind of offensive. I don’t go to bars if I can help it, don’t drink often, and yet have a large social circle (most of my friends do drink) and earn plenty. Studies like this really don’t tell us anything; they’re a waste of money.
I agree that this is not a very good or useful kind of research.
It is entirely possible that the teetotalers abstain because they make less money than the drinkers.
As has already been said, there may not be strong correlation between consumed alcohol and wages.
And, I am sure, it will not work in such a way:
“But the data show that, on average, one has to drink more than 21 drinks per week to start earning as little as a non-drinker.”
I think it is totally wrong to argue that anti-alcohol campaigns “Not only … reduce drinkers’ fun, but they also may decrease drinkers’ earnings.”
I was not aware there was a relationship between either alcohol consumption or social drinking and income. I find the research to be of great service as step towards understanding the factors that influence income. An improvement in the model would be to add a variable that measured the size of the individual’s social network.
Please see the book “Causality” by Judea Pearl to see how the causal relationship can be determined in econometric models like the one used here.
This is very faulty thinking. The positive correlation between drinking and earning money could be that those who earn more money have more to spend on booze.
It’s not very faulting thinking, it’s a theory…that’s how knowledge is advanced. You look at a dataset and make propositions about why and then do further study to try to determine which hypothesis may be true. It is possible that the reason is high earners have more money to spend on alcohol – but without further analysis you don’t know which, if either, is right. To outright eliminate a possibility is faulty thinking.
They didn’t say it was a fact, they said “we believe”
Agreed about the lack of causation. High paying, high stress jobs may drive people to drink. Or high earners make drink more because they can afford it. But the health benefits have never made much sense. The people with the greatest longevity in America are abstainers like Mormons and Seventh Day Adventists, though they also have other health codes they live by, like no smoking. And they also have large social support networks.
Or it could just be that individuals more likely to go out drinking are already more social individuals. A more asocial individual that goes out to a bar isn’t going to improve his success in life by forcing a specific activity.
When I stopped drinking after years of doing so…I found being around people incredibly boring and tedious. I realized that drinking had been a way to endure your typical social interaction. Maybe people are not as social as we might believe and alcohol enhances or even allows social interaction. (This observation would also support the data…though I imagine if you did a study comparing different age groups you would probably find some type of bell curve.)
I’d like to do a study that factors in how much money both demographics end up with. Do those who make more also spend more, and consequently have less money in the end? “Whoever loves pleasure will be a poor man; he who loves wine and oil will not be rich.” –Proverbs 21:17
What do you mean, “end up with”? Is the measure of one’s riches that which he doesn’t consume?
Saving still aims at future consumption. Money that never gets spent is as good as lost.
Well, we could use the method politicians (Obama being a prime example) employ to make their case for more spending of OPM (sounds like opium, is equally addicting, stands for other people’s money). I call it the Poignant Personal Story (PPS) method. There is no logical basis for its purpose, but apparently it works to sway the masses to demand more OPM because all the pols use it. Often “large” panels of five to ten Poignant Personal Story Tellers (PPSTs) are called into public hearings by congresscritters to “prove,” for example, that health-care services are desperately needed to save untold numbers of little children from devastating diseases–and these five or ten people are here tell you all about it. Crying mothers must be particularly persuasive, for we see many of them.
So here’s my PPS, Edward Stringham’s thesis: I don’t drink, and I don’t earn any money.
On the other hand, I do either have or get all the money I need, not a whole lot mind you, gratuitously, without taking any benefits whatsoever from that criminal organization–the State.
Three cheers for success! And a fourth for failure!
This is one of those theories that you can test yourself! If you drink more, and become richer, then it is true! If you become poorer after drinking more, then it is false! At least you can have fun testing it!
I like the article and have no problem with causation. Everything is endogenous. The numbers of any study must be questioned. But what is wrong with the interpretation that people who are social drinkers make more money?
The money buys alcohol causation makes sense, too – yes. But it goes both ways. One could also guess that people who do not make enough money drink because they need the drug to be happy. So the networking-social drinking effect is not simply argued away.
There are other ways in which the government’s anti-alcohol binge is absurd. Whenever I make a recipe that calls for half a cup or a cup of wine, I must crack open a $10-plus bottle of wine from my local government liquor store. Unless that is, I use the disgusting, heavily-salted garbage called “cooking wine” which grocery stores are permitted to sell. This is happening at the same time that the government criminals are campaigning against “too much salt” in our diets. Stealing with one hand, smacking people with the other hand.
In my jurisdiction (Ontario) the rampaging Nazis posing as “the greater good” (TM) authorities seem to have run out of enthusiasm for all the million other ways they have of harassing the public. So they’re thinking up new excuses for beating up people, handcuffing them and sticking them in jail. The latest pogroms that have come to my attention are (1) warrantless searches of ice-fishing cabins, in which liquor consumption is forbidden (question – why the hell else would anyone go ice fishing if not to drink?), and (2) stopping people from holding a beer in their hands while watching an outdoor concert – from within a fenced enclosure (same question).
Immoral people earn more than moral people (no scruples, you know). Drinkers are immoral. Therefore, drinkers earn more than non-drinkers.
There is no paucity of causes if you don’t have to test it!
“causes”
Alcohol doesn’t have health benefits. alcohol has health benefits *for overweight people*. And because so many people are overweight (the majority in the USA), the studies show increase in health if the population in general drinks. You will find however that the healthiest individuals are those who do not drink and are not overweight.
This is why you can not longer take results of these studies at face value, because the ‘average’ person is no longer in the healthy category. This is why we constantly see conflicting information about what is and isn’t good for you. You need to read the studies and see the results for people of similair conitions to you.
“But there’s good news for those who like drinking and want good careers: economic data shows that drinkers actually earn significantly more money than non-drinkers.” This is very interesting statement, but it does make sense that drinkers tend to socialize more, they make more contacts with those in the business world.
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