title: Is the demand for alcohol in indigenous Australian communities 'price inelastic'?
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To review the findings of a paper that has often been cited as evidence-with potentially adverse public health consequences-that the demand for alcohol in Indigenous Australian communities is not responsive to price and that, in the face of increasing alcohol prices, expenditure is diverted from basic sustenance to the purchase of alcohol.
  
  
  METHODS
  The raw data on income and various items of expenditure from the original study were entered in a database, a trend variable was created, and trends in measures of interest were tested using appropriate cross-correlations.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Re-analysis of the data did not support the findings of the original study.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The original study does not contradict the general findings of the national and international literature that the demand for alcohol is sensitive to increases in price and does not provide evidence for the assertion that, other factors being equal, price controls on the availability of alcohol in Indigenous communities are likely to be ineffective.
authors.affiliation: National Drug Research Institute, Curtin University, Perth, Australia. d.gray@curtin.edu.au
authors.forename: Dennis
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gray
mesh_terms: D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000191:economics* / Q000208:ethnology*; D000434:Alcoholic Beverages / Q000191:economics*; D001315:Australia / Q000208:ethnology; D003132:Commerce / Q000191:economics*; D006801:Humans; D044382:Population Groups; D012111:Residence Characteristics