Wine and Violent Crime

It is worth making the point that correlation does not imply causality, and people who might be tempted should not see anything other than a joke in the main comment or summary attached to this graph.

Older people drink more wine. Younger people commit more crime. The population is aging.

Matts comment is right because it's per capita.
this would be a better graph it was demographic specific.
although this is all in fun.

Could be just seen as an indicator of disposable income. As DI rises, people buy do things that lead to less crime.

It'll be interesting to compare violent crime to other beverages to see if there's any "criminal drink"

Moe's right. More disposable income leads to less crime and more buying spree's..

Moe's right. More disposable income leads to less crime and more buying spree's..

All the explanations have one thing in common: they say that the two dependent variables (wine drinking and violent crime) do not have a direct causal link with each other. Instead, they share a common cause, though the common cause is not the same across all explanations.

If two variables have a common cause, then one does not cause the other. Most statistical textbooks dealing with these kinds of modeling issues will state this as an elementary claim.

I wonder if the "wine" in the study includes Maddog 20/20. Corked wine vs. Screw-top?
Having said that, I have to agree with Matt. I have never heard of a gangster with a taste for the full bodied, robust, yet slightly tannic Burgundy wines.

Correlate crime stats with the civil rights act of 1964 and a rider attached to that bill which removed immigration quotas. Thes two things have contributed more to increasing crime than any other single event. There is more than adequate, valid data to support this argument.

Most of the data compared on this site is too obviously biased. As an example, The weather and gdp comparison would have some value if looked at over a few centuries not a few decades. By limiting variables one can achieve ones own bias. Numbers lie and liars number.

From the graph it seems that changes in crime rates generally *precede* changes in wine drinking.

I'm curious as to what actually is behind the violent crime data... convictions? reports?

Think about it.

How about the James Carville explanation: it's the economy, stupid. During good economic times wine consumption goes up and crime goes down. When the economy is down, the opposite holds.

Yep, it’s the economy; stupid. Wine is, as we all know, essential to life. But, disposable income correlates with wine quality. More income, better wine. Lower income, cheaper wine. Cheap wine, or even worse, no wine, leads to crime.

what if alcohol and not only wine is compared?

This graph is very misleading..

Pennabilli, here's the graph that compares total alcoholic beverages with violent crime: http://www.swivel.com/graph... The correlation is much less pronounced.

Wine is so Fine!!!

I think a criminal drink is malt liquor

Hobos have sometimes been referred to as "winos." Some wine is very cheap and may (not citing any statistics) be a drink of choice among homeless individuals. Homeless people plus intoxication--you do the math.