DRINKING PATTERNS AND THEIR GENDER DIFFERENCES IN EUROPE
1 National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health STAKES, Alcohol and Drug Research Group, PO Box 220, 00531 Helsinki, Finland, 2 Swiss Institute for the Prevention of Alcohol and other Drug Problems, Lausanne, Switzerland, 3 Institute for Biostatistics and Clinical Epidemiology, Charité—University Medicine Berlin, Germany, 4 Unit for Health Promotion Research, University of Southern Denmark, Esbjerg, Denmark, 5 Centre for Social Research on Alcohol and Drugs, Stockholm, Sweden and 6 Alcohol treatment Center, Lausanne University Hospital, Lausanne, Switzerland
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +358 9 3967 2159; Fax: +358 9 3967 2170; E-mail: pia.makela{at}stakes.fi
Aims: To compare drinking habits and to examine differences between drinking cultures in different regions and countries in Europe; to examine gender differences in drinking habits and to compare them over countries. Methods: Data consisted of independently conducted, centrally analysed surveys in the general population aged 20–64 years in 14 European countries. Central measures were abstention, frequency and volume of drinking overall and by beverage type, amounts drunk per drinking day, and heavy episodic drinking. Results: There were clear gender differences in all drinking measures, except for wine drinking. Differences between genders were often smaller than average in northern Europe. Gender ratios did not show systematic changes by age, with the exception that young men and women differed less than older men and women in the frequency of heavy episodic drinking. The results on beverage preferences indicate that the distinction among wine/beer/spirits cultures have implicitly been based on male drinking. Our expectation was for more daily light drinking integrated in everyday life in the Mediterranean countries, more heavy episodic drinking associated with weekends and celebrations in the North, with the traditional beer countries somewhere in between. The differences observed were usually in the direction expected. However, no country represented an ideal type of drinking culture, i.e. drinking for ‘mood-changing effects’ only or for ‘nutritional purposes’ only; all countries were mixtures of these two extremes. Conclusions: There were clear and consistent gender differences in all countries, while the differences in drinking between countries and regions were not as obvious.
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