After Uber arrives, heavy drinking increases, Hacker News

UBER HAS hit a few potholes on its ten-year journey. In recent years the ride-hailing company has been beset by sexual-harassment scandals, lawsuits over drivers ’contracts and battles with regulators. Its share price has fallen by a third since it went public in May. After all these bumps, it is easy to forget just how much urbanites around the world have come to rely on Uber, which is now on the streets of more than 700 cities.

Among other things, Uber has made it far easier for party-goers to get home safely. One study published in 2017 found that after Uber’s arrival in Portland, Oregon, alcohol-related car crashes declined by 62%. But at the same time, the spread of ride-hailing apps may have tempted people to drink to excess, knowing that they won’t be at the wheel. A new study by three economists — Jacob Burgdorf and Conor Lennon of the University of Louisville, and Keith Teltser of Georgia State University — finds that the widespread availability of ride-sharing apps has indeed made it easier for the late-night crowd to binge.

By matching data on Uber’s availability with health surveys from America’s Centers for Disease Control, the authors find that on average alcohol consumption rose by 3%, binge drinking (in which a person downs four or five drinks in two hours) increased by 8%, and heavy drinking (defined as three or more instances of binge drinking in a month) surged by 9% within a couple of years of the ride-hailing company coming to town. Increases were even higher in cities without public transport, where the presence of Uber led average drinking to rise by 5% and instances of binge drinking to go up by around 20%. (Heavy drinking still rose by 9%.) Remarkably, excessive drinking was actually declining before Uber’s appearance, giving further evidence that the firm’s arrival affected behavior.

If people are likelier to drink a lot, but less likely to drive drunk, it is hard to say what the overall public-health impact of ride-hailing firms has been. That said, there is one group of individuals who clearly benefit from the presence of Uber, Lyft and others: bartenders. Messrs Burgdorf, Lennon and Teltser find that employment at bars and restaurants increases by an average of 2% whenever Uber enters the market.