A Network Model of Alcoholism and Alcohol Policy

Abstract

The evolution of alcohol dependence in populations of people on different social networks is studied. Two models are studied. One is the evolution of the states of individuals on hypothesized social structures from a rewired connected caveman model. This model spans a range of social structures (networks) from very ordered to effectively random with small world structures in between. The second model is a zip-code-level model which uses data from a recent survey in Delaware. The model is a discrete model using 10 zip codes. The results show that the evolution of alcohol dependence, as governed by the simple rules that we use, depends sensitively on the network structure and a hypothetical treatment regime.