What drives people to drink? Interpreting the effect of urban living on the use and abuse of alcohol

Drinking has become a serious problem for as many as 15 million Americans. Previous research on this subject has shown that urban living is often strongly correlated with problem drinking, although the underlying causes are not well understood. This paper attempts to shed some light on these causes by identifying factors that are associated with a variety of indices of problem drinking. These relationships are examined in the context of four alternative models of alcohol use and abuse: these are a ‘blaming the victim model’; a ‘social opportunities model’; a ‘cultural integration model’; and a ‘distribution of consumption model’. The models are estimated using county-level data from Oklahoma for 1970, and the results indicate that although urban living is related to problem drinking, the case for the urban variable has probably been over-stated.