Heavy drinking
Sensible drinking guidelines in the UK are now defined in terms of daily benchmarks,
which are currently no more than 3-4 units per day for men and no more than 2-3
units per day for women. These benchmarks are the result of a UK Government
Working Group report, published in 1995, called ‘Sensible Drinking’. However, prior
to this, sensible drinking guidelines were based on weekly consumption, with
recommended limits of 21 units per week for men and 14 units per week for women.
Using the data from the cohort studies we can therefore create a dichotomous
variable indicating heavy drinking which has a different threshold of weekly units for
men and women. In 1991 there were 27.7% of men in the 1958 cohort who reported
drinking more than 21 units of alcohol in the previous week, and there were 8.2% of
women in the same cohort, who reported drinking more than 14 units of alcohol in the
previous week. In 2004, for the 1970 cohort the comparable figures were 26.9% for
men and 11.2% for women. This is further evidence that while men’s alcohol
consumption is relatively similar across the two cohorts, women’s consumption is
substantially higher in the younger cohort.
Frequency of drinking by number of units of alcohol consumed
As briefly discussed above, there has been considerable concern in recent years
over the issue of binge drinking. This raises a question about the link between
frequency of drinking and number of units drunk per week in the two cohorts. As
shown in tables 3a and 3b below for both men and women in both cohorts, there is a
very strong association between the mean number of units of alcohol drunk and the
frequency with which the cohort member reports drinking alcohol. However, it is also
interesting to note that the link is slightly less strong for the 1970 cohort than for the
1958 cohort. In particular, for both men and women the amount of alcohol drunk by
those who report that they drink on most days is lower among the 1970 cohort than
among the 1958 cohort. This suggests that although the later-born cohort is drinking
more frequently than the 1958 cohort they may be drinking less on each occasion.
Clearly these results are only applicable to individuals in their early thirties and
therefore do not reveal anything about possible patterns of drinking among teenagers
or those in their twenties. More detailed analysis of adolescent and adult binge
drinking, using data from the 1958 cohort study, is provided by Jefferis, Power and
Manor (2004).
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