Alcohol and Homicide in Russia and the United States: A Comparative Analysis

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Objective: The object of this study was to perform a comparative analysis of the aggregate relationship between alcohol and homicide in Russia and in the United States. The comparison was based on the magnitude of the alcohol effect, the alcohol attributable fraction (AAF), and the degree to which total consumption could account for trends in homicide. Method: We analyzed total and sex-specifi c homicide rates for the age groups 15-64 years, 15-34 years, and 35-64 years. The study period was 1959-1998 for Russia and 1950 for the United States. For the United States, alcohol consumption was gauged by sales of alcohol; for Russia, estimated unrecorded consumption was included as well. The data were analyzed through autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) modeling. Results: The results show that, for Russia as well as for the United States, a 1-L increase in consumption was associated with an increase in homicides of about 10%, although the absolute effect was markedly larger in Russia because of differences in homicide rates. The AAF estimates suggested that 73% and 57% of the homicides would be attributable to alcohol in Russia and in the United States, respectively. Most of the temporal variation in the Russian homicide rate could be accounted for by the trend in drinking, whereas the U.S. trend in total alcohol consumption had a more limited ability to predict the trend in homicides. Conclusions: We conclude that the role of alcohol in homicide seems to be larger in Russia than in the United States. (J. Stud. Alcohol Drugs, 72, 723-730, 2011)

More evidence that spirits can be more dangerous: Homicide in Russia and suicide in Japan

“…Two new population-level studies of alcohol-related mortality, reported in this issue [1,2], highlight spirits as the beverage type having the strongest association with suicide in Japan [1] and homicide in Russia [2]. No significant relationships with other beverage types were found in either study, although Stickley and Razvodovsky found a significant association with total alcohol in Russia as had been found in earlier analyses [3]. Studies of suicide in Japan had not previously found significant associations with total alcohol sales despite individual-level evidence indicating the importance of alcohol, making the results reported by Norström, Stickley and Shibuya particularly novel.…”

Understanding and using time series analyses in addiction research

“…For example, researchers in a recent comparative analysis of the relationship between aggregate alcohol consumption and homicide rates in Russia and in the United States ran separate models for each country and compared the effects. They concluded that the role of alcohol in homicide seems to be larger in Russia than in the United States . However, they could not test the difference between the trends in the different regions directly.…”

Métodos de investigación sobre daños en la población relacionados con el alcohol

“…Generalmente se toma el logaritmo del desenlace, por ejemplo: ▽lnMt=β*(▽At)+▽Nt, donde N es un término de ruido que recoge la tendencia en la mortalidad debida a factores no considerados en el modelo y errores de medida, y β el estimador del efecto que permite obtener medidas como el porcentaje de cambio anual (PCA) de M asociado al cambio de 1-litro en el consumo [PCA=(eβ-1)*100]. Se puede considerar el período de latencia entre A y M ponderando A por el consumo presente y pasado [19][20][21][22][23][24][25] . Los méto-dos agregados tienen la ventaja de conside-rar las consecuencias del consumo del alcohol para otras personas (por ejemplo lesiones) y de los factores contextuales del consumo.…”

“…Además, dada su naturaleza ecológica, no permiten establecer relaciones de causalidad. Por otra parte, no suelen estimar el efecto independiente de los patrones de consumo, en particular los atracones (a menudo definidos como el consumo de 5-6 unidades estándar de alcohol en un corto periodo, por ejemplo dos horas) 21 . A las evidencias procedentes de estos méto-dos se les suele dar menos valor que a las de estudios con datos individuales.…”

“…Se suelen aplicar modelos de regresión ARIMA a series anuales de datos de consumo per cápita de alcohol y tasas de mortalidad general o por causa [19][20][21]59 . Las FAP se estiman como FAP=1−e (-β*A) , siendo A el consumo medio anual per cápita durante el período considerado y β la pendiente del modelo de regresión.…”