Table 9b Estimated weekly alcohol consumption by age group for women:
General Household Survey 2002-2003
|
Age |
Mean |
N |
Std. |
|
group |
Deviation | ||
|
16-19 |
19.9 |
266 |
27.3 |
|
20-24 |
18.2 |
398 |
18.9 |
|
25-29 |
11.7 |
416 |
13.9 |
|
30-34 |
10.8 |
559 |
13.4 |
|
35-39 |
10.0 |
590 |
11.2 |
|
40-44 |
11.2 |
558 |
12.8 |
|
45-49 |
10.3 |
538 |
9.9 |
|
50-54 |
9.6 |
492 |
9.8 |
|
55-59 |
9.3 |
464 |
10.5 |
|
60-64 |
7.8 |
346 |
8.3 |
|
65-69 |
7.7 |
308 |
9.4 |
|
70-74 |
6.6 |
213 |
9.1 |
|
75+ |
6.4 |
418 |
8.5 |
|
Total |
10.7 |
5566 |
13.4 |
It can be seen that in comparison with men in the BCS70 cohort (aged 34 in 2004),
who reported drinking 18.5 units of alcohol per week the figures from the general
Household Survey are somewhat higher at 22.7 units of alcohol per week for men in
the 30-34 age group. Similarly for women the figures are 8.1 units per week for those
in the BCS70 cohort compared with 10.8 units per week for 30-34 year-olds in the
General Household Survey. This suggests that the methodology for collecting data on
alcohol consumption in the GHS may result in slightly higher estimates than the
questions used with the cohort studies. However it should also be noted that the
numbers of individuals in each age group of the GHS is substantially smaller than the
sample sizes in the cohort studies and this results in relatively large standard errors
for the mean values in Table 9a and 9b.
Summary and Discussion
This paper has presented a detailed descriptive analysis of reported patterns of
alcohol consumption for men and women in the 1958 and 1970 British Birth Cohort
Studies. For the first time it has been possible to make a direct comparison of the
reported drinking behaviour of individuals in their early thirties from two cohorts born
twelve years apart. The results show that although there has been a modest increase
in reported levels of alcohol consumption for the later cohort this is due to an increase
in reported alcohol consumption for women rather than men.
The preliminary findings reported in this paper raise a question about whether all
women are drinking more, or whether the characteristics of the 1970 cohort women
differ from the 1958 cohort at the same age, and this is resulting in different drinking
patterns.
For example, previous research has shown that those women with children tend to
drink less than women without children (Power, 1985). If women are delaying
childbirth and therefore fewer women at age 34 have children than did in the early
1990s this might partially explain the increase in alcohol consumption. Further
multivariate research is therefore needed to investigate the extent to which women in
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