India is an interesting research setting for investigating the effects of policies, because states can have very different policies in place. Consider alcohol: According to Wikipedia, alcohol is banned in the states of Bihar, Gujarat, Mizoram, and Nagaland, as well as most of the union territory of Lakshadweep. In states where alcohol is legal, the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) varies from 18 years to 25 years. And the laws change relatively frequently. Mizoram banned alcohol most recently in 2019.
Indian states provide a lot of variation to use for testing the effects of alcohol regulation. And that is what this 2019 article by Dara Lee Luca (Mathematica Policy Research), Emily Owens (University of California, Irvine), and Gunjan Sharma (Sacred Heart University), published in the IZA Journal of Development and Migration (open access), takes advantage of. They first collated exhaustive data on alcohol regulations changes at the state level, focusing on prohibition and changes in the MLDA. They note that:
Between 1980 and 2008, the time frame for our analysis, the MLDA ranged from 18 to 25 years across the country, and some states had blanket prohibition policies. In addition, we identified six states that changed their MLDA at least once; Bihar increased its MLDA from 18 to 21 in 1985, and Tamil Nadu repealed prohibition and enacted an 18-year-old MLDA in 1990, then subsequently increased it to 21 in 2005. Andhra Pradesh and Haryana both enacted prohibitionary policies in 1995 (the MLDA in Andhra Pradesh had been 21, and 25 in Haryana) only to later repeal them in 1998 and 1999.
In all, Luca et al. have data on law changes in 18 states over the period from 1980 to 2009, and for 19 states in a more limited number of years. They then look at a number of different outcome variables, drawn from the 1998-1999 and 2005-2006 waves of the National Family Health Survey, as well as crimes and mortality data. They first show that:
...men who are legally allowed to drink are more likely to report drinking, and the relationship is statistically significant. Given that the mean of alcohol consumption for men in the data is approximately 24%, this 5 percentage point change in likelihood of drinking is substantial, representing a 22% increase in the likelihood of drinking.
So, alcohol regulation does affect drinking behaviour (which seems obvious, but is much less obvious for a developing country like India than it would be for most developed countries). Having established that alcohol consumption is related to regulation, Luca et al. then go on to find that:
...husbands who are legally allowed to drink are both substantially more likely to consume alcohol and commit domestic violence against their partners...
...policies restricting alcohol access may have a secondary social benefit of reducing some forms of violence against women, including molestation, sexual harassment, and cruelty by husband and relatives. At the same time, changes in the MLDA do not appear to be associated with reductions in criminal behavior more broadly. We find suggestive evidence that stricter regulation is associated with lower fatalities rates from motor vehicle accidents and alcohol consumption, but also deaths due to consuming spurious liquor (alcohol that is produced illicitly).
In other words, there is evidence that stricter alcohol regulations are associated with lower levels of alcohol related harm, particular domestic violence and violence against women. Now, these results aren't causal although they are consistent with a causal story. Interestingly, Luca et al. choose not to use instrumental variables analysis (which could provide causal evidence), because the regulations proved to only be weak instruments (and they were also worried about violations of the exclusion restriction, because changes in alcohol regulation might have direct impacts on criminal behaviour). Luca et al. still assert that their results 'suggest a causal channel', and to the extent that we accept that, it highlights the importance of alcohol regulation in minimising alcohol-related harm in a developing country context.
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