The Impact of Alcohol Intake on Human Beings Health in China

摘要

Drinking is one of the main causes of disease burden. In this paper, we tried to find the effect of alcohol intake on health state using the China Health and Nutrition Survey data in a model of regression. We initially used the self assessed health, which was widely used in related studies, in the database as the health variable but obtained controversial result. After that, to test the result we compared the drinking status between participants who are longevous and who are not and found the initial result is unreasonable. We then used the life span as our health variable which produced sensible result as expected. Linear regression and ordinal logistic regression were used to quantify the effect of alcohol intake on health. The results for our sample suggest two conclusions: 1) drinkers are overconfident in their health statuses; and 2) alcohol intake does shorten the life span on average.