![]() Robust demand in even the poorest places is one reason that breweries invest where other industries fear to tread. Add those pennies up and you get a potential market worth billions of dollars a year. Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo of MIT have shown that people living on a dollar a day or less can spend 6 cents or more of that on alcohol and tobacco. In 1961, Brazilians drank 630 million liters of beer in 2007 that number was 7.5 billion liters.Īnd it isn’t just those in booming economies: Even the poorest of the poor will spend money on alcohol. By 2005, however, the country consumed more than 40 billion liters per year. Liesbeth Colen and Johan Swinnen of the University of Leuven report that beer consumption in China in 1980 was minimal. In a time of unprecedented global prosperity, there are an ever-growing number of beer guzzlers worldwide. It’s the brewery as economic stimulus: a formula even a frat boy could love. In some of the world’s toughest investment climates, beer companies today are building factories, creating jobs, and providing vital public services, all in the pursuit of new customers for a pint. And from the 18th-century Gin Acts in Britain to Prohibition in 1920s America to a certain class of modern-day economists, there’s a long tradition of blaming intemperance for the persistence of poverty.īut in fact, mounting evidence suggests that beer in particular, and the beer industry that surrounds it, may be as good for growth as excess sobriety. Many of the most popular theories of economic growth in wealthy countries, dating back to the Protestant work ethic of Max Weber, emphasize the abstemious and sober virtues of the well-to-do. ![]() The myth of the smug teetotaler is no joke. ![]()
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