Our latest Freakonomics Radio podcast is called “Do More Expensive Wines Taste Better?” It features some research presented by the American Association of Wine Economists, whose members include Karl Storchmann, managing editor of the group’s Journal of Wine Economics.
Storchmann wrote to us the other day about an interesting working paper the AAWE has just posted: “Women or Wine? Monogamy and Alcohol,” by Mara Squicciarini and Jo Swinnen. From the abstract:
Intriguingly, across the world the main social groups which practice polygyny do not consume alcohol. We investigate whether there is a correlation between alcohol consumption and polygynous/monogamous arrangements, both over time and across cultures. Historically, we find a correlation between the shift from polygyny to monogamy and the growth of alcohol consumption. Cross-culturally we also find that monogamous societies consume more alcohol than polygynous societies in the preindustrial world. We provide a series of possible explanations to explain the positive correlation between monogamy and alcohol consumption over time and across societies.
And the conclusion:
We provide several hypotheses to explain these observations. In pre-industrial societies we find that the correlation is related to the nature of the economy. Comparing hunting, gathering and fishing (HFG) societies that practice agriculture and animal husbandry we find that the former drink more alcohol and are more monogamous. The reason can be higher subsistence insecurity or less hierarchical and structured organization, that characterize HFG societies. On the one hand, there are relatively small differences among men in the control over crucial resources to support multiple women; on the other hand, they may consume a higher quantity of alcohol as a relief and as a way to get rid of their anxiety or to face less social constraints in their society. This relationship is particularly strong for indicators of excessive alcohol use (drunkenness). Lower income in HFG societies may have reduced average demand.
Historically, the global transition from polygynous to monogamous societies and the growth of alcohol consumption finds its basis in some crucial moments of the world history. The Greeks and Romans spread both formal monogamy and viticulture across the ancient world. With the decline of the Roman Empire, the Christian Church maintained and reinforced formal monogamy, albeit that effective polygyny remained widely practiced. At the same time monasteries became centers of brewing and winemaking techniques and spread viticulture around Europe. The industrial revolution brought about the major and definitive change towards effective monogamy and popularization of alcohol consumption. Both changes (in alcohol consumption and in marriage arrangements) were induced by changes in social structures, economic developments and technological innovations associated with the industrial revolution.
I wrote to Swinnen with a few questions; here are his answers.
What was your inspiration for this paper; i.e., where’d the idea even come from?
The inspiration came from a casual observation (over a glass of wine) that the two social/religious groups that do allow polygamy ((parts of) Mormonism and Islam) also do not consume alcohol. So we wondered whether this was a coincidence or not. We collected information on the historical evolution of both (mono/polygamy and alcohol use) and on cross-cultural/country evidence. We found that there is a positive correlation between alcohol consumption and monogamy both over time and across (pre-industrial) societies
Given the difficulty of the empirical work involved here, how confident are you in the conclusion?
I think we are pretty confident on the empirical correlations. Our explanation of why that is the case is a set of hypotheses, some of which we could test and some of which remain hypotheses because we did not find data to test them (so far — we keep thinking and looking).
Depending on your confidence: would you posit that alcohol consumption is a means of preserving monogamy in a culture that already practices it?
Our explanation/hypothesis in the paper is that the correlation is “spurious” in the sense that we do not find evidence/arguments for direct causality between both, but that other factors affect both alcohol consumption and the shift from polygamy to monogamy.
So when/if you pop a cork with your loved one this week to christen the New Year, you might want to ask yourself: do we drink because we’re monogamous, or are we monogamous because we drink?
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I think you can throw out the Mormon example, if for no other reason than it’s a relatively new religion and the period of accepted, legal polygamy was fairly short. In South Africa, polygamy is illegal but widely accepted (the current president has 3 wives, and you’ll find plenty of other polygynous societies among neighboring nations that are more than happy to consume alcohol). Likewise, there are plenty of older and more popular Christian sects that forbid or strongly discourage alcohol (Baptists, Quakers, Methodists, 7th Day Adventists, etc.) that do not endorse polygamy.
It’s also worth pointing out that in various parts of the wide swath of cultures and regions that make up the “Muslim World”, alcohol and polygamy have been around for thousands of years, while getting rid of alcohol is a relatively recent prohibition. North Africa, Israel, Lebanon, Turkey, Iran, were all classic wine regions, and of course the Sumerian beer industry of modern-day Iraq is legendary.
Food taboos (which is really what we’re talking about) are powerful but not necessarily connected to anything more meaningful; Canada and the US are very similar from a ethnic and historical standpoint, but eating horse is legal in one and socially abhorrent in the other, a distinction that’s only emerged in the past few decades.
I think that Drill-baby-drill has it mostly right. There’s no real correlation between monogamy and alcohol consumption, but it’s just that required avoidance of alcohol and polygamy are both ideas that are impractical in a modern society, and are only really followed by ideologues. It seems that Muslims and Mormans tend to follow the rules of their religion more than the Christians and Jews in this country. Furthermore, the rules themselves tend to be more restrictive.
In this society, it’s hard enough for a guy in his 20′s to get a good girl, by having to compete with the fact that some guys are getting 4-5 girls.
“In this society, it’s hard enough for a guy in his 20′s to get a good girl, by having to compete with the fact that some guys are getting 4-5 girls.”
When will Freakanomics address the brutal lives of the beta males?
The implications of the research are ludicrous
WARNING: The following comment may not be considered to b e PC.
As (the late) comedian Henny Youngman used to say:
“Take my wife . . .
PLEASE!”
@Sviluppo In South Africa polygamy is legal under customary law. It is the Recognition of Customary Marriage Act no 120 of 1998
can you imagine what a bar bill would be with 4 wives? so we chose.
Stephen J. Dubner had incomplete data. The Chinese men were allowed multiple wives until early twentieth century but had a long tradition of alcohol consumption. The emperors, who had hundreds of wives, did not drink any less. Sadly, a huge part of the world (Asia) continues to be ignored by many scholars in this country.