Booze and Big Love

Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution notes a paper, titled “Women or Wine, Monogamy and Alcohol,” that purports a correlation between teetotalling and polygyny:

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.

This is made even more interesting by the thought that the production of beer may have been one of the impetuses for ancient humanity to settle down and start civilization.

Related posts:

1. We Lose at Booze
2. No more cheap booze in Britain
3. Free Four Loko