 Drinking during downturn: New evidence from the housing market fluctuations in the United States during the Great RecessionPrabal K. De and Raul Segura-Escano Economics & Human Biology, 2021, vol. 43, issue C Abstract: We investigate how the decline in home prices over the Great Recession in the U.S. impacted drinking behavior. We match data on actual and shadow home prices (from Zillow Research) to individuals’ drinking behavior from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) by county of residence and year/month of the interview. We improve upon the existing literature by using new measures of exogenous macroeconomic shocks captured by fluctuations in home prices and finding heterogeneous impacts of the downturn based on homeownership. We find that decline in home prices is commonly associated with increases in alcohol consumption, both on extensive and intensive margins. Additionally, we find that the effects are more consistent among homeowners compared to renters. Given that alcohol consumption is one of the leading causes of death in the U.S. and that the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered an economic crisis in many societies, the results have important public health implications. Keywords: recession; housing market; BRFSS; alcohol consumption (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ehbiol:v:43:y:2021:i:c:s1570677x21000952 DOI: 10.1016/j.ehb.2021.101070 Access Statistics for this article Economics & Human Biology is currently edited by J. Komlos, Inas R Kelly and Joerg Baten More articles in Economics & Human Biology from Elsevier |
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