Sobering: America’s skewed drinking

us_drinks_data
We know that a third of Americans abstain from alcohol. Another third don’t drink too much. But the Wonkblog has a striking graphic showing that the top decile really pound the stuff, drinking an astonishing ten drinks per day. That’s about two bottles of wine a day. Paging Gerard Depardieu!

The data come from Paying the Tab: The Costs and Benefits of Alcohol Control, by Philip J. Cook, published in 2007 by Princeton University Press. Cook used National Epidemiological Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC) survey data collected in 2001-2 (there was a second survey in 2004-5). He says that the shape of the distribution has been documented “many times and many places” and is accepted as a “stylized fact” among scholars in the field. He argues that the beverage alcohol industry writ large is thoroughly dependent on this decile for their profits. Further, he says that if the top decile of drinkers cut their consumption to the next decile (a reduction of more than 75%), “total ethanol sales would fall by 60 percent.”

There’s a lot here. I wonder what the alcohol of choice is for those in the top decile. I’d venture to say it’s a lot of (light) beer and spirits and Cook hinted as much in his comments to the Wonkblog. Wine may certainly play a part (look at the “Big Joe” wine glass in Cougar Town that the characters delighted could fit a whole bottle). But it would be interesting to test the Jeffersonian hypothesis that wine is a drink of moderation.

Another observation is that even if the beverage alcohol industry is dependent on the top decile for profits, it’s probably a safe bet that those in the top decile are not that discriminating and/or highly price sensitive. So even if those consumers are what might in other fields be called “power users,” they are probably not early adapters, particularly curious, or trend setters or gate keepers as you might find in other fields with such a skew. In wine, at least, those would probably be consumers in the eighth and ninth deciles, people who imbibe enough to have experience and views but who are not, erm, dependent on the stuff and are willing to spend more per bottle.

In other data from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, part of the NIH, Americans are drinking less total alcohol than they were in the late 1970s:

alcohol_consumption_us_time

Wine has risen since 1991, while beer and spirits are flat since then. So if wine is a drink of moderation, maybe drinking more wine explains the reduction in overall alcohol consumption?

alcohol_by_type_trends

3 Responses to “Sobering: America’s skewed drinking”


  1. A bad situation for the Beverage Alcohol Industy. Who is in the top 10%, why are they drinking so much, and when they die will they be replaced by drinkers who will ascend to that top tier? Not my problem, except that I would like for these people not to be on the road with me, but interesting nonetheless.


  2. It would be interesting to see what kind of curve is in that top 90th percentile, because it’s not going to be a flat 74 drinks a week across the whole graph. What’s the 99th percentile drinking compared with what the 90th percentile is drinking?


  3. […] Sobering statistics on Dr. Vino’s blog this week: “We know that a third of Americans abstain from alcohol. Another third don’t drink too much. But the Wonkblog has a striking graphic showing that the top decile really pound the stuff, drinking an astonishing ten drinks per day. That’s about two bottles of wine a day.” Actually, I’m not sure Americans will be that surprised by this. Mrs. Winetuned wasn’t, but there are some interesting conclusions to draw from this in terms of the U.S. wine industry. Read the whole post on Dr. Vino. […]


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