Religion and the Demography of "Dry"Counties in the United States.

Our fundamental objective in this paper is to explain why certain counties persist being "dry" at the start of the twenty-first century. In particular, we seek to determine whether factors identified as important for the initial drive for Prohibition remain important nearly 80 years later. Our basic approach is to assess to what extent social, political, and economic variables are related to the presence of restrictions on the sale of alcohol at the county-level across the United States. Analyzing contemporary county-level data from over 3,000 U.S. counties, we find that the strongest factors associated with dry status are the religious composition of the county, especially the presence of Evangelical Protestants. Conversely, the presence of larger concentrations of Catholics is a powerful factor inhibiting the adoption of prohibition in a county. The obvious regional character of the political geography of contemporary prohibition - this phenomenon is almost entirely southern - appears to be driven by the uneven distribution of different religious adherents across the country. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]