More pubs-More problems? A longitudinal analysis of Swedish panel data.

Introduction: The aim of the study is to estimate the association between bar density and nighttime emergency calls to the police.

Methods: We used a pooled cross-sectional time-series data set covering the Swedish 290 municipalities spanning the time period 2012-2021. As outcome we used nighttime emergency calls to the police and daytime emergency calls to the police as control variable. Bar density was measured as number of serving establishments licensed to serve alcohol after 1 am. The municipalities were classified into three socio-economic (SES) categories: low, middle and high-SES areas. We used survey data to estimate the prevalence of heavy episodic drinking (HED) for each of the three SES areas. We applied fixed-effects modelling to estimate the association between bar density and nighttime police calls, implying that only within-unit variation was exploited.

Results: Findings suggested that a 10% increase in bar density would result in a 0.46% (p = 0.001) increase in nighttime police calls. There was a marked gradient in the bar effect across SES areas; in high-SES areas the effect was not significant, while the effect was twice as strong in the low-SES areas as in mid-SES areas. We also found that the lower the status of the SES area, the higher the prevalence of HED.

Discussion And Conclusions: We found a significantly positive association between bar density and nighttime police calls. However, the association was markedly stronger in low-SES areas (which were also characterised by an elevated HED prevalence) than in high-SES areas (distinguished by a lower HED prevalence).