increase was estimated to reduce unconditional overall child abuse (i.e., a measure of child abuse that includes the frequency of the abuse) by about 2.1 percent. Even such a seemingly small reduction in child abuse rates could have a dramatic impact on the lives of many children. In 1975, approximately 40 million children between the ages of 3 and 17 lived with both parents. According to the National Family Violence Survey, 14.4 percent of these children (i.e., 5.8 million) were victims of severe abuse. Hence, a 10-percent increase in the beer tax would have lowered the number of severely abused children by approximately 132,500.
