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Persistent Patterns in the U.S. Alcohol Market: Looking at the Link between Demographics and Drinking

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2019

Jarrett Hart  and
Julian M. Alston
Jarrett Hart
Affiliation:
Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA95616, USA; e-mail: jdhart@ucdavis.edu.
Julian M. Alston
Affiliation:
Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Director of the Robert Mondavi Institute Center for Wine Economics at the University of California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA95616, USA; e-mail: jmalston@ucdavis.edu.
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Abstract

Global consumption patterns for alcoholic beverages are evolving, with some convergence in per capita consumption among nations, as traditionally beer-drinking nations increase their consumption of wine and, conversely, wine-consuming nations shift towards beer. In a forthcoming article (Hart and Alston, 2019), we explore regional patterns of alcoholic beverage consumption within the United States. One purpose is to see if similar patterns of spatial convergence in consumption patterns can be observed within countries as have been documented in international comparisons. A more fundamental purpose is to explore the converse question and seek to better understand the persistent differences in alcoholic beverage consumption among groups. These issues are addressed using annual U.S. national and state-level data over four decades and, for the more recent period, supermarket scanner data at finer scales of geopolitical aggregation. This proceedings article focuses on the analysis using supermarket scanner data. We find that socioeconomic and demographic variables appear to play significant roles in accounting for the spatial differences in consumption patterns. (JEL Classifications: D12, L66)

Keywords

beer and winedemand modelssocioeconomic characteristicsspatial patternsUnited States ancestry
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Wine Economics , Volume 14 , Issue 4 , November 2019 , pp. 356 - 364
Copyright
Copyright © American Association of Wine Economists 2019

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Footnotes

The authors gratefully acknowledge helpful comments and advice from Kym Anderson, Tim Beatty, James Fogarty, Jim Lapsley, Dan Sumner, an anonymous reviewer, and various participants at workshops and conferences.

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