Via Tyler Cowen here's a great example of correlation not equaling causation in a paper by researchers Mara Squicciarini and Jo Swinnen called "Women or Wine, Monogamy and Alcohol (pdf)" Here's the abstract.
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.
Source: Amerian Association of Wine Economists Working Paper #75
They're quite clear that the connection really is a correlation, and they do a reasonably good job of explaining how the two trends tended to develop in parallel.
Question: Should polyamorists take note? :-)
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What a fun thing to look at!
Submitted by Amanda (not verified) on Thu, 2010-12-30 13:09.What a fun thing to look at!
I read this article after
Submitted by Ginny (not verified) on Sun, 2011-01-09 15:49.I read this article after seeing it linked here, and it's definitely interesting.
As a polyamorist, the biggest thing that jumps out at me is that there's no mention at all of societies where men and women both have multiple partners, and how they might factor into the equation. Is equal-opportunity polygamy more like polygyny or monogamy? I'd argue that in the context of this article, it's much more similar to monogamy: social and economic roles are more equalized between males and females, hierarchy is less rigid, it's more associated with sharing of resources than hoarding. (Also sex, like alcohol, is a possible way to cope with subsistence anxiety.) But the article doesn't even mention that such societies exist.
In the modern world? The only non-monogamous person I know who doesn't drink smokes a lot of weed. So yeah.