Sobering up for the New Year
Do you fancy a tipple?
Throughout January, millions of people will be making New Year’s Resolutions to start something new or cut back on their favourite indulgences
Only 46% of people who made a resolution report that they successfully achieve it, although this is still a lot of people making a change in their lives (if only temporarily)
To mark this, we’re sharing stats about some of the most common things you might give up as New Year’s Resolutions - next up its Alcohol!
How much alcohol is drunk around the world?
Globally, we drank 272 billion litres of alcoholic beverages in 2022, equivalent to 34 litres per person each year (c. 45 bottles of wine each)
Most heaviest drinkers tend to be in Eastern Europe (based on 2019 data), including:
- Czech Republic: 14.3 litres of pure alcohol per capita
- Latvia: 13.2 litres per capita
- Moldova: 12.9 litres per capita
- Germany & Lithuania: both 12.8 litres per capita
Note: most country comparisons use pure alcohol consumption to normalise for differences in the strength of alcoholic drinks. One litre of pure alcohol is equal to 56 average-sized glasses of wine
Alcohol consumption is a lot lower in other parts of the world, particularly around the Middle East where drinking is perceived more negatively
There are five countries where no alcohol was consumed in 2019: Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Kuwait, Mauritania and Somalia (according to official stats)
Other than these, the countries that drank the least were:
- Afghanistan: 0.01 litres per capita
- Libya and Yemen: both 0.03 litres per capita
- Egypt: 0.1 litres per capita
Society is not uniform and this includes drinking habits. For example, in the Czech Republic men drink more than 3.3x the amount of alcohol than women drink. This trend is found in most countries, including those that consume alcohol less frequently such as Turkmenistan where men reportedly drink 5x more than women
How popular are different types of drinks?
Beer (i.e. lager, ale, stout, etc.) is the most popular drink worldwide with 45% of global consumption going towards this type of beverage
After this, spirits are next most popular (33%) followed by wine (22%)
However, this depends a lot though on the country. Two thirds of all alcohol consumed in Italy is wine (as of 2014), although this is historically low considering that wine used to make up 95% of alcohol consumption back in in the 1890s
Italians not following the worldwide popularity of beer is potentially unsurprising considering they produce more wine than any other country (19% of the world’s supply of wine; France follows a similar trend)
In terms of the best selling brands of beer:
- AB InBev is the world’s largest brewer, producing 58 billion litres in 2021, including Budweiser, Corona, Stella, Leffe, Becks, Fosters and Skol
- This is followed by Heineken (23 billion) and Carlsberg and (12 billion)
- Despite this, the two most popular individual brands of beer are both Chinese: Snow and Tsingtao (5.4% and 2.8% of global market share, respectively). Bud Light and Budweiser occupy 3rd and 4th place
When it comes to spirits, Asian businesses lead the way:
- Jinro is the largest spirits manufacturer, producing more 90 million cases of their Korean drink, Soju, vs. the 30 million cases of the next highest: McDowell’s whiskey, Diageo’s Indian whiskey brand
- When measuring the most valuable spirits, though, Chinese firms dominate. Moutai is the highest grossing brand ($30 billion) followed by Wuliangye, Yanghe and Luzhou Laojiao - all types of Baiju
- The most valuable western spirit was Britain’s Johnnie Walker, owned by Diageo, with a brand value of $4.6 billion
And should we be giving up booze?
Most people realise that alcohol is not good for our health, but that doesn’t stop us abusing it (on occasion)
So what are some of the costs?
Let’s look at some recent examples from the UK:
- In 2021, alcohol was the primary cause of 280k hospital admissions, an 8% increase in the last 5 years. Of these, men were admitted in 2/3 of cases
- 14 in every 100,000 British people died in 2020 with a cause of death related to alcohol, an 18.6% rise on the year before
- To put this in context, this means almost 10,000 deaths will be caused by alcohol each year. In comparison, the current death rate from Covid-19 in the UK suggests that c. 42,000 people would die per year if that rate remained flat for a year
- The rate in Scotland was as high as 21.5 per 100,000 people (suggesting Scottish alcohol-related deaths will only be half of covid-related deaths)
- On top of this, 11% of anti-social behaviour is believed to be alcohol-related
- It’s believed that 39% of people committing violent crime were under the influence of alcohol
- In all, it’s estimated that alcohol costs the British economy £21.5 billion per year. If this cost could be re-spent by the UK Government, it would fund its entire Health and Social Care bill for 1.5 months
But there are some positive signs that society is starting to take their drinking more seriously
Spending on alcohol had been decreasing consistently from 2003, before increasing again up to 2.2% of total household expenditure in 2020¹
Young people have been leading the charge on teetotalism, with the number of young people in the UK that don’t drink alcohol increasing to 23% by 2020 (5% fewer people aged over 65 years were teetotal)
On top of this, 9 million Brits (of all ages, 17% of total) planned to take part in Dry January in 2023, an increase of almost 1 million people on the previous year
Note¹: the cause of the big increase between 2019–20 was partially due to a 10% decrease in UK household spending in 2020, but mostly due to a 23% increase in spending on alcohol
Check out more GoodStats about Christmas and New Year:
- Chocolate, can you give it up? Have a break, have a KitKat
- The Gift of Giving; I hope you enjoy this 4 minute-long present
- Let it Snow! Are you dreaming of a White Christmas?
