IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aph/ajpbhl/10.2105-ajph.2014.302428_0.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Effects of a 2009 Illinois alcohol tax increase on fatal motor vehicle crashes

Author

Listed:
  • Wagenaar, A.C.
  • Livingston, M.D.
  • Staras, S.S.

Abstract

Objectives. We examined the effects of a 2009 increase in alcohol taxes in Illinois on alcohol-related fatal motor vehicle crashes. Methods. We used an interrupted time-series design, with intrastate and cross-state comparisons and measurement derived from driver alcohol test results, for 104 months before and 28 months after enactment. Our analyses used autoregressive moving average and generalized linear mixed Poisson models. We examined both population-wide effects and stratifications by alcohol level, age, gender, and race. Results. Fatal alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes declined 9.9 per month after the tax increase, a 26% reduction. The effect was similar for alcoholimpaired drivers with positive alcohol levels lower than 0.15 grams per deciliter (-22%) and drivers with very high alcohol levels of 0.15 or more (-25%). Drivers younger than 30 years showed larger declines (-37%) than those aged 30 years and older (-23%), but gender and race stratifications did not significantly differ. Conclusions. Increases in alcohol excise taxes, such as the 2009 Illinois act, could save thousands of lives yearly across the United States as part of a comprehensive strategy to reduce alcohol-impaired driving.

Suggested Citation

  • Wagenaar, A.C. & Livingston, M.D. & Staras, S.S., 2015. "Effects of a 2009 Illinois alcohol tax increase on fatal motor vehicle crashes," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 105(9), pages 1880-1885.
    • Handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:10.2105/ajph.2014.302428_0
    DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2014.302428
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.2105/AJPH.2014.302428
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2105/AJPH.2014.302428?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nelson, Jon P. & McNall, Amy D., 2016. "Alcohol prices, taxes, and alcohol-related harms: A critical review of natural experiments in alcohol policy for nine countries," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 120(3), pages 264-272.
    2. Gehrsitz, Markus & Saffer, Henry & Grossman, Michael, 2021. "The effect of changes in alcohol tax differentials on alcohol consumption," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).
    3. Henry Saffer & Markus Gehrsitz & Michael Grossman, 2022. "The Effects of Alcohol Excise Tax Increases by Drinking Level and by Income Level," NBER Working Papers 30097, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:10.2105/ajph.2014.302428_0. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christopher F Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.apha.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.