The breakdown of alcohol use disorders by gender for any country can be viewed here; the majority of people with alcohol use disorders – around three-quarters – are male. It’s estimated that globally, around 1 percent of the population has an alcohol use disorder. At the country level, as shown in the chart, this ranges from around 0.5 to 5 percent of the population.
Reasons as to why consumers participate in Dry January include “health benefits…whether that is about calorie control and weight management or just feeling better overall.” Other reasons for decreasing alcohol consumption are to save money and a change in social life. More specifically, when asked how many alcoholic drinks of any kind they had in the past seven days, a third of drinkers (34%) in 2022 said they had had none. About half (53%) said they had between one and seven drinks, while 12% reported consuming eight or more drinks, thus averaging more than one per day.
Overall, 62% of U.S. adults say they ever drink alcohol, while 38% abstain completely, according to a July 2023 Gallup survey. Gallup has asked Americans for more than eight decades whether they have “had occasion to use alcoholic beverages such as liquor, wine or beer.” During that span, majorities have consistently said they consume alcohol. This share peaked in the late 1970s, when 71% of adults said they drank alcohol.
Alcoholic beverage preferences and purchases
The “seltzer boom brought variety and flavor to customers,” which encourages them to be more willing to try new flavors in other beverage categories. Broad majorities of Americans believe the use of alcohol adversely affects society and drinkers themselves. Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 75% cellphone respondents and 25% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods. Per capita ethanol consumption from spirits by region, United States, 1977–2021.
Alcoholic beverage preference
It is accelerating with year-to-date 2021 performance trending higher than 2019, with projections to end at +3.8% in volume. Per-capita alcohol consumption appears to be highest in the West and lowest in the South, based on the NIAAA data. On the state level, it appears to be highest in New Hampshire and Delaware, and lowest in Utah.
What Is Americans’ Drink of Choice?
Drug use disorders are often classified within the same category as mental health disorders — research and data on mental health can be found on our topic page here. Find out how many people have alcohol use disorder in the United States across age groups and demographics. Find up-to-date statistics on lifetime drinking, past-year drinking, past-month drinking, binge drinking, heavy alcohol use, and high-intensity drinking. Census Bureau’s monthly retail sales survey, December sales at such retailers were 37% above the average for the other 11 months of the year. Conversely, January and February are typically the slowest months for those sellers.
- IWSR indicates that “RTD growth has slowed due to a highly saturated hard seltzer segment.”
- In South Africa and Papua New Guinea, more than half of all traffic deaths are attributable to alcohol consumption.
- While this is particularly prevalent with RTDs, we’re also seeing significant growth in flavors in beer and spirits as well.”
- Following the ethanol conversions, gallons of ethanol for beer, wine, and spirits are summed to gallons of ethanol for all beverages.
This led to imported beer finishing the year at a market share of 21.8%, up +1.2% from 2019. The non/low alcohol beer segment did align with the trends shown in the other categories with forecasts to grow with a compounded annual growth rate volume of +23.6% from 2021 to 2025. The report also stated that consumers’ thirst for alcoholic beverages is not slowing down as the country returns to normal.
Hard seltzers represent a 56.7% share of the total RTD category in the US, followed by flavored alcoholic beverages (FABs) (25.9% share) and ready-to-drink cocktails/long drinks (6.9%). Results for this Gallup poll are based on combined data from Gallup surveys how do you smoke moon rocks conducted by telephone in July 2021 and July 2022. For results based on the total sample of 2,020 national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.