Racial differences in the effects of regulatory variables on alcohol -related mortalit

We examine racial differences in the effects of regulatory variables on alcohol-related mortality in a time series of states of the United States for the period from 1980 through 1991. Six causes of death are studied: (1) diseases in which alcohol use is the primary cause including alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver and alcohol dependence syndrome; (2) motor vehicle traffic accidents; (3) suicides; (4) homicides; (5) falls, fires, and other accidents; and (6) cancers of the alimentary tract. Our main result is that the price of liquor is a more important regulatory variable for whites, while the per capita number of outlets that are licensed to sell alcohol is a more important regulatory variable for blacks. For whites, we find that price has a negative and significant effect on primary cause alcohol mortality, with an elasticity of -0.19. This finding is important because many more deaths in this category are due to alcohol than those in the other categories, and because deaths in which alcohol is the primary cause account for almost one-quarter of those studied. Our results imply that a 10 percent rise in price would lower the number of whites who die from causes directly related to alcohol by 2 percent. For blacks, outlet density elasticities, based on significant regression coefficients, are 0.34 for primary cause mortality and 0.16 for homicide. These results are important because these two causes of death account for almost three-fifths of all black deaths studied and because the black homicide rate of 47 deaths per 100,000 population is larger than any other race-specific death rate in this study, and is almost seven times larger than the white rate. Our results imply that the black homicide rate would fall by approximately 2 percent and the primary cause mortality rate would fall by approximately 3 percent if the number of alcohol outlets were reduced by 10 percent.