average of the prices of alcohol from beer, wine, and liquor) reduce the probability of severe violence (kicking, biting, hitting with a fist or other object, choking, and using or threatening to use a gun or knife) aimed at wives. Using an average of the estimates from the fixed-effects specification, Markowitz (2000) estimated that a 1-percent increase in the price per ounce of pure alcohol would decrease the probability of being a victim of wife abuse by 5.3 percent.8 This means that in 1985, when there were 54.4 million married women in the United States, of whom 3.6 percent were estimated to be abused, a 1-percent increase in the price of pure alcohol would have decreased the number of abused married women by approximately 104,600.
