Geiger Ben Baumberg, MacKerron George
School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research (SSPSSR), University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NZ, UK.
Department of Economics, Jubilee Building, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9SL, UK.
Soc Sci Med. 2016 May;156:184-91. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.03.034. Epub 2016 Mar 26.
There are surprisingly few discussions of the link between wellbeing and alcohol, and few empirical studies to underpin them. Policymakers have therefore typically considered negative wellbeing impacts while ignoring positive ones, used gross overestimates of positive impacts via a naïve 'consumer surplus' approach, or ignored wellbeing completely. We examine an alternative subjective wellbeing method for investigating alcohol and wellbeing, using fixed effects analyses of the associations between drinking and wellbeing within two different types of data. Study 1 examines wave-to-wave changes in life satisfaction and past-week alcohol consumption/alcohol problems (CAGE) from a representative cohort of people born in Britain in 1970, utilising responses at ages 30, 34 and 42 (a sample size of 29,145 observations from 10,107 individuals). Study 2 examines moment-to-moment changes in happiness and drinking from an iPhone-based data set in Britain 2010-13, which is innovative and large (2,049,120 observations from 31,302 individuals) but unrepresentative. In Study 1 we find no significant relationship between changing drinking levels and changing life satisfaction (p = 0.20), but a negative association with developing drinking problems (-0.18 points on a 0-10 scale; p = 0.003). In contrast, Study 2 shows a strong and consistent moment-to-moment relationship between happiness and drinking events (+3.88 points on a 0-100 scale; p < 0.001), although associations beyond the moment in question are smaller and more inconsistent. In conclusion, while iPhone users are happier at the moment of drinking, there are only small overspills to other moments, and among the wider population, changing drinking levels across several years are not associated with changing life satisfaction. Furthermore, drinking problems are associated with lower life satisfaction. Simple accounts of the wellbeing impacts of alcohol policies are therefore likely to be misleading. Policymakers must consider the complexity of different policy impacts on different conceptions of 'wellbeing', over different time periods, and among different types of drinkers.
令人惊讶的是，关于幸福与酒精之间联系的讨论极少，且几乎没有实证研究来支撑这些讨论。因此，政策制定者通常只考虑了酒精对幸福的负面影响，却忽略了积极影响；或者通过天真的“消费者剩余”方法严重高估了积极影响；又或者完全忽视了幸福这一因素。我们研究了一种用于调查酒精与幸福关系的替代性主观幸福感方法，运用固定效应分析两种不同类型数据中饮酒与幸福之间的关联。研究1考察了1970年出生在英国的代表性人群队列中，生活满意度和过去一周酒精消费/酒精问题（CAGE）随时间的变化情况，利用了30岁、34岁和42岁时的回答（样本量为来自10107个人的29145条观测数据）。研究2考察了2010 - 2013年英国基于iPhone数据集的幸福与饮酒的即时变化情况，该数据集具有创新性且规模庞大（来自31302个人的2049120条观测数据），但不具有代表性。在研究1中，我们发现饮酒水平的变化与生活满意度的变化之间没有显著关系（p = 0.20），但与饮酒问题的发展呈负相关（在0 - 10分的量表上为 - 0.18分；p = 0.003）。相比之下，研究2显示幸福与饮酒事件之间存在强烈且一致的即时关系（在0 - 100分的量表上为 + 3.88分；p < 0.001），尽管该即时关系之外的关联较小且更不一致。总之，虽然iPhone用户在饮酒时更幸福，但这种幸福感只会少量溢出到其他时刻，而且在更广泛的人群中，数年中饮酒水平的变化与生活满意度的变化并无关联。此外，饮酒问题与较低的生活满意度相关。因此，关于酒精政策对幸福影响的简单描述很可能会产生误导。政策制定者必须考虑不同政策在不同时间段、对不同类型饮酒者以及对“幸福”的不同概念所产生的不同影响的复杂性。
