TUESDAY, July 20 (Health.com) — More adults in the U.S. appear to be drinking alcohol, according to a new study of the nation’s drinking habits.
And the trend seems to be consistent across ethnic groups and genders. Between 1992 and 2002, the percentage of men and women who drank alcohol increased, as did the percentage of whites, blacks, and Hispanics, the study found.
Americans don’t seem to be drinking more, however, as the average number of drinks consumed per month remained steady.
“More people are drinking, but they seem to not be drinking heavily as frequently,” says Rhonda Jones-Webb, an epidemiologist and alcohol expert at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, in Minneapolis. (Jones-Webb was not involved in the research.)
Yet the study revealed an important exception to that trend: an uptick in the number of people who binge drink at least once a month. Binge drinking is defined as consuming five or more drinks in one day.
“We need to address this increase, which may be associated with alcohol abuse,” says Deborah Dawson, PhD, a staff scientist at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, in Bethesda, Md. “We may need to focus our attention on preventive measures that target binge drinking.”
Although the study doesn’t show how drinking trends may have changed since 2002, the rates of binge drinking—and drinking in general—may be even higher now. Over the past two years, the economy has nose-dived into recession and joblessness has climbed—and, as the study notes, unemployment is associated with stress and alcohol use.
It “could be the case” that Americans are drinking more to assuage their financial anxiety, Jones-Webb says. “It would be good to replicate the same study over the last eight years and see if the findings are similar.”
Researchers from the University of Texas School of Public Health and the University of North Texas Health Science Center compared data from two national surveys on adult alcohol consumption that were conducted roughly a decade apart, in the early 1990s and early 2000s. (Both surveys included a representative sample of Americans, but they did not include the same individuals.)
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