Who paid for this dumb study? Women or Wine? Monogamy and Alcohol

Here is a difference in the sexes. These two women don't seem to know that men often will sit in a bar getting loaded as the some hag will miraculously metamorphose into more of a beauty in a direct relationship to amount of alcohol consumed. This sometimes happens in the inverse, but to a much lesser degree. The resulting consequence can be some form of polygamy (including adultery).

Also, the two biggest polygamous religions on earth preach and for the most part practice abstinence from imbibing alcohol.

Women or Wine? Monogamy and Alcohol - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine

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The headline is the title of an intriguing new working paper [PDF] by two University of Leuven economists Mara Squicciarini and Jo Swinnen.- note an interesting correlation between societies that practice monogamy and those that drink alcohol. As the abstract explains:

...across the world the main social groups which practice polygyny do not consume alcohol. ... 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.

In fact the two economists find that more drinking means more monogamy. So what are the possible explanations for this correlation? After performing a cross-cultural analysis using historical data, they find:

There is a strong negative correlation between polygyny and Frequency of Drunkenness.

Or conversely put, the data:

...indicate a positive correlation between monogamy and alcohol consumption (and especially between monogamy and drunkenness) across societies.