Alcohol Consumption in the United States and Russia - Essay Example

Among the investigated impacts of alcohol is its impact on the social scene, a reflection of The Mail (Feb 17, 2011) and its economic and environmental implications (OECD, 2012; Mail Online, Feb 17, 2011).

The points of interest for the study are:
1) Is an individual’s earnings related to how much alcohol they consume?
2) Is age a significant determinant of the number of pints an individual consumes per month? Is the underlying relationship supported in any of the two countries?
3) Is there evidence of a strong will to drop the consumption of alcohol among the respondents?
4) Is there a significant difference between alcohol consumption in the USA and the Russian Federation?
H0: There is no linear relationship between alcohol consumption and the average earnings of an individual.
H1: There is a linear relationship between alcohol consumption and the average earnings of an individual.

We realize that there is a significant positive correlation between the amount of money an individual earns and their tendency to increase alcohol intake, at a 1% level of significance. Therefore the richer a Russian is (owing to their immediate income), the greater their tendency to take more alcohol.

There is a weak positive correlation between the income of an individual and the severity of their alcoholism tendencies. However, the correlation between the variables is not significant at a 1% level of significance. This means there is a weak positive relationship between the earnings of an individual and their alcohol consumption rate in the USA.
Next, we test whether age is a strong determinant (or a determinant at all) of the level of alcohol consumption among individuals. This is tested using regression analysis. The dependent variable is the level of consumption (number of pints) while the independent variable is the age of the respondent.

Only 2.2% of the variation observed in the dependent variable (age of respondent) is explained by the independent variable (amount of alcohol). Therefore age is not a valuable predictor of the amount of alcohol consumed by the Russian population when the results are generalized to cover the whole population represented by the sample.
We check the same for the US sample.

Next, the study takes a predictive dimension, trying to ascertain what we would expect to see in the levels of alcoholism between the two countries. To do this we assume that on average, the respondents are not sure whether they will stop alcoholism at all.