UNCG RECEIVES GRANT TO STUDY ECONOMIC
EFFECTS ON INDIVIDUAL DRINKING BEHAVIOR
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GREENSBORO--Earlier research on drinking behavior and economic conditions found that when times are good people drink more, but Dr. Christopher J. Ruhm of The University of North Carolina at Greensboro wants to determine why.
Ruhm, the Jefferson-Pilot Excellence Professor of Economics at UNCG and a former senior economist with President Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers, has received a $125,034 two-year grant from the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to study whether there are differences in drinking behavior based on age, race, sex or whether a person is a heavy or light drinker.
"The previous analysis I did looked at the effect of macroeconomic conditions, such as state unemployment rates, on total alcohol consumption in the state, but without being able to tell who was doing the drinking," said Ruhm, who specializes in labor economics and health economics. "Here we're looking at these macroeconomic conditions, but at the effects on individuals."
Ruhm's research will use a survey administered by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System is a state-based survey that asks a common set of questions.
"For this project we'll use specific information on drinking behavior, such as: Did you drink in the last 30 days? If you drank, how many alcoholic beverages did you consume?" Ruhm said.
Economic factors seem to matter when it comes to drinking, and Ruhm wants to determine who is most at-risk during good economic times.
"If it's mainly working people who drink more in good times, companies might want to think about employee assistance programs or other workplace interventions, and this research could be helpful in targeting those individuals," Ruhm said. "This research will increase our understanding of the determinants of alcohol use and abuse, improve our ability to focus prevention efforts on those groups at greatest risk and enable us to more accurately measure the costs to society of alcoholism and problem drinking."
Ruhm spent a year in Washington, D.C., as a senior economist with the Council of Economic Advisers. He has conducted extensive research on the economic consequences of alcohol and illegal drug policies, the causes and effects of job displacements, the transition process into retirement and the effects of parental leave policies. Ruhm is the coauthor of the book "Turbulence in the American Workplace" and has written more than 40 articles for journals such as the American Economic Review, Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Health Economics and the Journal of Labor Economics.
He came to UNCG's Department of Economics in 1991 and received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley.
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