Since the childhood, I have always been curious about the pattern of people’s behaviors. What variable does shape how each individual face the same situation differently? How it shape? How to change? etc. That’s the reason why I’m highly interested into GapMinder Project.
Thanks to 5 years in marketing industry, I got a highly valuable observation: Financial status since childhood till adult links deeply to how we behave. You can’t escape your background. Consequently, I come up with one question.
- Is incomeperperson associated with alcconsumption range?
To answer this question, I will use DATA ANALYTIC function in excel to run regression model. My code book is only included two variables: incomeperperson and alcconsumption range.
During review process for my own code book, I continue coming up with the 2nd question to dig in deeper relationship between two variables.
2. The lower incomeperperson is, the higher alcconsumption range is. Income is independent variable, alcoholic consumption is dependent variable.
Before me, a lots of research has been developed to explore the relationship between income and alcohol consumption. According to “Associations Between Socioeconomic Factors and Alcohol Outcomes” by Susan E. Collins, there is a positive relationship between SES and alcohol use, such that individuals with higher SES (or living in areas with higher SES) engage in more frequent and heavier drinking. However, this relationship may be moderated by other individual-level variables, such as drinking status, gender, race, and ethnicity (CDC 2012; Karriker-Jaffe et al. 2012).
To answer this research question, firstly, income variable is classified into 4 type of countries according to World Bank:
- Low income
- Lower-middle income
- Upper-middle income
- High income
The result is:
- Low income: 76
- Lower-middle income: 136
- Upper-middle income: 0
- High income: 0
Then, I use data analytics function on excel to get R Square result.
1. Low income:
R Square = 0.04 < 0.5 which means there maybe a significant relationship between income level and alcoholic consumption.
Coefficients = 0.00262: This means for each 1% increase of income, alcoholic consumption moves up to 0.00262%
2. Lower-middle income:
R Square = 0.00001351 which means there maybe a significant relationship between income level and alcoholic consumption.
Coefficients = 0.000088: This means for each 1% increase of income, alcoholic consumption moves up to 0.000088%.
Based on above results, we can conclude that maybe there is a dependent relationship between income level and alcoholic consumption. The higher income level is, the higher alcoholic consumption is. It supports the findings of “Associations Between Socioeconomic Factors and Alcohol Outcomes” research by Susan E. Collins.
References
Collins SE. Associations Between Socioeconomic Factors and Alcohol Outcomes. Alcohol Res. 2016;38(1):83–94. PMID: 27159815; PMCID: PMC4872618.
