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Alcohol control and foster care

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Abstract

Parental alcohol consumption is often associated with an increased likelihood of child abuse. As consumption is related to price, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the propensity for increases in the full price of alcohol to influence entry rates and the length of time spent in foster care. Using alcoholic beverage prices and a measure of availability in combination with data on foster care cases, we find that higher alcohol prices are not effective in reducing foster care entry rates; however, once in foster care, the duration of stay may be shortened by higher prices and reduced availability.

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Notes

  1. The liquor price series collection by ACCRA ends in 2004. Also, the variation in alcohol taxes (which is a source of variation for price) is limited after this date. For example, no state changed its beer tax change between 2004 and 2008.

  2. The percent of a state’s population living in dry counties is another potential availability measure. This variable was tested in the models but suffers from limited variation during our sample period and is therefore is not included. However, results suggest that areas with larger populations in dry areas have lower foster care entry rates. These are available upon request.

  3. The ten states are Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington. Maine has missing alcohol prices in all years and is excluded from the analyses.

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Acknowledgments

Funding for this project was provided by Grant #R03AA016836 from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism or the National Institutes of Health. We are grateful to two anonymous referees for their very helpful suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, 30322, USA

    Sara Markowitz

  2. NBER, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Sara Markowitz, Alison Cuellar & Michael Grossman

  3. George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

    Alison Cuellar

  4. US Food and Drug Administration, Silver Spring, MD, USA

    Ryan M. Conrad

  5. City University of New York, New York, NY, USA

    Michael Grossman

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  1. Sara Markowitz
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  2. Alison Cuellar
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  4. Michael Grossman
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Correspondence to Sara Markowitz.

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Markowitz, S., Cuellar, A., Conrad, R.M. et al. Alcohol control and foster care. Rev Econ Household 12, 589–612 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-013-9198-5

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