BMJ 2015;350:h2610 doi: 10.1136/bmj.h2610 (Published 13 May 2015)
Page 1 of 3
News
NEWS Problem drinking is rising among England’s well educated women Sophie Arie London
Alcohol consumption is falling or stable in most rich countries, but in the United Kingdom it is rising, and in England more and more young and highly educated women are drinking too much, a major report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has said.1 Across the UK the proportion of 15 year olds who had drunk any alcohol rose from 71% in 2002 to 75% in 2010. And in England 40% of girls (twice as many as boys) reported having been drunk at least twice before they were 15 years old.
At the same time, the proportion of highly educated (university educated) women who now drank in a way that could damage their health was almost as high as among educated men. Some 20% of highly educated women, and 23% of highly educated men, consumed a weekly amount of pure alcohol of 140 g or more for women or 210 g or more for men (the World Health Organization’s definition of hazardous consumption).
“The long term tendency is that in teenage girls binge drinking is going up, although it has been down in the last few years,” said the OECD’s Mark Pearson at the London launch of the report, Tackling Harmful Alcohol Use, which compared data on alcohol consumption across the organisation’s 34 member countries over a 30 year period. “In England, problem drinking is concentrated among educated women,” he said. “Women with high education now behave very much like men [in relation to alcohol].”
bottles of wine per person per year). Meanwhile, in France and Italy consumption has dramatically fallen. In the same 20 year period the proportion of children aged 15 years or under who had experienced drunkenness rose from 30% to 43% of boys and from 26% to 41% of girls.
Harmful consumption of alcohol rose from being the eighth leading cause of death and disability to the fifth, worldwide, between 1990 and 2010, the report said. The cost, in terms of effects on productivity, crime, and health, is estimated at around 2% of gross domestic product, which Pearson pointed out was roughly the share of the value added to GDP by the alcohol industry.
After analysing the potential effects of a set of policies—including price policies, regulation, enforcement, and education and healthcare interventions in Canada, the Czech Republic, and Germany—the OECD concluded that the largest gains in health and life expectancy could be obtained through brief interventions in primary care, typically targeting high risk drinkers and tax increases that resulted in an average increase of 10% in alcohol prices. Next in terms of impact were regulation and enforcement policies, as well as treatment of alcohol dependence. School based programmes showed less promise, the OECD said. It estimated that most alcohol policies would cut overall healthcare expenditure to the extent that implementation costs would be more than offset.
Among women the highest proportion of hazardous drinking was found among those aged 45 to 64.
“This is an area that any country that cares about its economic performance has to take seriously,” said Pearson.
The effects on health of excessive alcohol use continues to be most severe, however, among less educated people.
Nick Sheron, the European Union Alcohol and Health Forum representative at the Royal College of Physicians, said, “The OECD is an organisation with impeccable economic credibility, and so the modelling of health and economic impact of alcohol policy in this outstanding report deserves to be taken very seriously by governments around the world.”
OECD researchers believe that highly educated women in England may be drinking more because of a combination of factors, including greater employment opportunities, sometimes in industries with a heavy drinking culture; more disposable income; increased responsibility; stress at work; and having children later. They also noted that drinking among women has become more socially acceptable. However, Nordic countries, where women have made greater progress in terms of equal opportunities, have not seen a similar trend.
Across the 34 nations of the OECD alcohol consumption fell or remained stable in most countries between 1992 to 2012. Average annual alcohol consumption in OECD member countries fell 2.5% between 1992 and 2002 to 9.1 L of pure alcohol per person. But consumption has continued to rise in the UK, which now consumes 10.6 L a head (on average, 100 For personal use only: See rights and reprints http://www.bmj.com/permissions
Franco Sassi, the senior OECD health economist who compiled the report, said that UK regulations aimed at reducing alcohol consumption were weaker than those of other OECD countries. For example, the UK has the highest acceptable blood alcohol level for drivers (0.08%, whereas it is 0.05% in most countries).
1
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Tackling harmful alcohol use: economic and public health policy. 12 May 2015. www.oecd.org/publications/tacklingharmful-alcohol-use-9789264181069-en.htm.
Cite this as: BMJ 2015;350:h2610 © BMJ Publishing Group Ltd 2015 Subscribe: http://www.bmj.com/subscribe
BMJ 2015;350:h2610 doi: 10.1136/bmj.h2610 (Published 13 May 2015)
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NEWS
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BMJ 2015;350:h2610 doi: 10.1136/bmj.h2610 (Published 13 May 2015)
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Page 1 of 3
News
NEWS Problem drinking is rising among England’s well educated women Sophie Arie London
Alcohol consumption is falling or stable in most rich countries, but in the United Kingdom it is rising, and in England more and more young and highly educated women are drinking too much, a major report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has said.1 Across the UK the proportion of 15 year olds who had drunk any alcohol rose from 71% in 2002 to 75% in 2010. And in England 40% of girls (twice as many as boys) reported having been drunk at least twice before they were 15 years old.
At the same time, the proportion of highly educated (university educated) women who now drank in a way that could damage their health was almost as high as among educated men. Some 20% of highly educated women, and 23% of highly educated men, consumed a weekly amount of pure alcohol of 140 g or more for women or 210 g or more for men (the World Health Organization’s definition of hazardous consumption).
“The long term tendency is that in teenage girls binge drinking is going up, although it has been down in the last few years,” said the OECD’s Mark Pearson at the London launch of the report, Tackling Harmful Alcohol Use, which compared data on alcohol consumption across the organisation’s 34 member countries over a 30 year period. “In England, problem drinking is concentrated among educated women,” he said. “Women with high education now behave very much like men [in relation to alcohol].”
bottles of wine per person per year). Meanwhile, in France and Italy consumption has dramatically fallen. In the same 20 year period the proportion of children aged 15 years or under who had experienced drunkenness rose from 30% to 43% of boys and from 26% to 41% of girls.
Harmful consumption of alcohol rose from being the eighth leading cause of death and disability to the fifth, worldwide, between 1990 and 2010, the report said. The cost, in terms of effects on productivity, crime, and health, is estimated at around 2% of gross domestic product, which Pearson pointed out was roughly the share of the value added to GDP by the alcohol industry.
After analysing the potential effects of a set of policies—including price policies, regulation, enforcement, and education and healthcare interventions in Canada, the Czech Republic, and Germany—the OECD concluded that the largest gains in health and life expectancy could be obtained through brief interventions in primary care, typically targeting high risk drinkers and tax increases that resulted in an average increase of 10% in alcohol prices. Next in terms of impact were regulation and enforcement policies, as well as treatment of alcohol dependence. School based programmes showed less promise, the OECD said. It estimated that most alcohol policies would cut overall healthcare expenditure to the extent that implementation costs would be more than offset.
Among women the highest proportion of hazardous drinking was found among those aged 45 to 64.
“This is an area that any country that cares about its economic performance has to take seriously,” said Pearson.
The effects on health of excessive alcohol use continues to be most severe, however, among less educated people.
Nick Sheron, the European Union Alcohol and Health Forum representative at the Royal College of Physicians, said, “The OECD is an organisation with impeccable economic credibility, and so the modelling of health and economic impact of alcohol policy in this outstanding report deserves to be taken very seriously by governments around the world.”
OECD researchers believe that highly educated women in England may be drinking more because of a combination of factors, including greater employment opportunities, sometimes in industries with a heavy drinking culture; more disposable income; increased responsibility; stress at work; and having children later. They also noted that drinking among women has become more socially acceptable. However, Nordic countries, where women have made greater progress in terms of equal opportunities, have not seen a similar trend.
Across the 34 nations of the OECD alcohol consumption fell or remained stable in most countries between 1992 to 2012. Average annual alcohol consumption in OECD member countries fell 2.5% between 1992 and 2002 to 9.1 L of pure alcohol per person. But consumption has continued to rise in the UK, which now consumes 10.6 L a head (on average, 100 For personal use only: See rights and reprints http://www.bmj.com/permissions
Franco Sassi, the senior OECD health economist who compiled the report, said that UK regulations aimed at reducing alcohol consumption were weaker than those of other OECD countries. For example, the UK has the highest acceptable blood alcohol level for drivers (0.08%, whereas it is 0.05% in most countries).
1
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Tackling harmful alcohol use: economic and public health policy. 12 May 2015. www.oecd.org/publications/tacklingharmful-alcohol-use-9789264181069-en.htm.
Cite this as: BMJ 2015;350:h2610 © BMJ Publishing Group Ltd 2015 Subscribe: http://www.bmj.com/subscribe
BMJ 2015;350:h2610 doi: 10.1136/bmj.h2610 (Published 13 May 2015)
Page 2 of 3
NEWS
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BMJ 2015;350:h2610 doi: 10.1136/bmj.h2610 (Published 13 May 2015)
Page 3 of 3
NEWS
Figure
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