Alcohol consumption and income: Evidence from one-sample and two-sample Mendelian randomizations

Alcohol consumption has been linked to a number of adverse health outcomes, but the relationships between alcohol use and economic outcomes remain mixed. In this study, we investigate the causal impact of alcohol consumption on income by using genetic instruments of ALDH2 rs671 and ADH1B rs1229984 in the Mendelian randomization (MR) framework. Although OLS results show a positive link between alcohol use and income, one-sample MR estimates based on a sample of 645 individuals recently collected from rural China indicate that drinking is causally associated with a 15.8% reduction in income, and the adverse impact is heterogeneous across the income distribution. Results from two-sample MR lend further support to the main findings. Our results can provide a more comprehensive picture of the economic cost of alcohol use. (C) 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.