Alcohol, Author Interviews, BMJ, Gender Differences / 27.10.2016
Men and Women Now Drink About Same Amount of Alcohol
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Tim Slade, PhD
Associate Professor
National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre
University of New South Wales
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Historically, men have been more likely to drink alcohol than women and to drink in quantities that damage their health. However, evidence points to a significant shift in the drinking landscape with rates of alcohol use converging among men and women born in more recent times. In a bid to quantify this trend over time, we pooled data from 68 published research studies in 36 countries around the world. We looked at how the ratio of men’s to women’s alcohol use differed for people born in different time periods and found that the gap between the sexes consistently narrowed over the past 100 years or so. For example, among cohorts born in the early 1900s men were just over two times more likely than women to drink alcohol. Among cohorts born in the late 1900s this ratio had decreased to almost one meaning that men’s and women’s drinking rates have reached parity.
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