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Does Drinking in Moderation Lead to Higher Life Satisfaction?

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Abstract

This paper presents a study of the impact on a person’s life satisfaction of moderate alcohol consumption. Using a large dataset (N = 1.5 million) which covers the period 2005–2010, I find that moderate drinkers tend to be more satisfied with their life than abstainers. In order to check the robustness of the result found using the linear regression model, an instrumental variables (IV) approach is adopted. I exploit the fact that those who were interviewed after a holiday were more likely to report that they had consumed alcohol. The IV approach suggests that moderate alcohol consumption has little causal effect on life satisfaction. The positive correlation between moderate drinking and life satisfaction seems to be largely due to selection—that is, happy individuals tend to drink in moderation, rather than vice versa.

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Notes

  1. I use happiness and life satisfaction interchangeably.

  2. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA).Tenth Special Report to Congress on Alcohol and Health (2000).

  3. This is a question on overall or “global” self-reports of satisfaction with life, not domain specific subjective indicators of well-being such as job satisfaction and marital satisfaction. I consider life satisfaction an appropriate subjective well-being measure for this study as the effect of moderate drinking may affect many facets of life such as work, family, friendship and health. Also, the BRFSS does not seem to contain domain specific subjective well-being measures.

  4. Smoking is found to be correlated with drinking behavior (van Ours 2004; Auld 2005)

  5. County fixed effects allow us to identify coefficients from variation within a county. Because some counties contain very small number of observations, counties with less than 30 observations are excluded.

  6. Thanksgiving days are the followings: November 24 in 2005, November 23 in 2006, November 22 in 2007, November 27 in 2008, November 26 in 2009, and November 25 in 2010.

  7. I thank a referee for pointing out.

  8. The F > 10 rule of thumb comes from Staiger and Stock (1997).

  9. I thank a referee for pointing out.

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  1. Arkansas Tech University, Russellville, AR, USA

    Masanori Kuroki

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  1. Masanori Kuroki
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Correspondence to Masanori Kuroki.

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Kuroki, M. Does Drinking in Moderation Lead to Higher Life Satisfaction?. Applied Research Quality Life 12, 125–135 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-016-9455-x

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