Convergence in teenage drunkenness in Western countries
Levels of drunkenness in school age children are converging across the Western world as the number of teenagers reporting getting drunk rises in Eastern Europe but declines in most countries in Western Europe and in North America.
This is the conclusion of a team of researchers who analysed the results of the Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children Surveys.* These showed a significant increase of about 40% in the mean frequency of drunkenness in all 7 participating Eastern European countries. This increase was evident among both genders, but most consistently among girls. However, the frequency of drunkenness declined in 13 of 16 Western countries, about 25% on average. Declines in Western countries were particularly notable among boys and in North America, Scandinavia, the United Kingdom, and Ireland.
Despite this gender convergence, with few exceptions (Greenland, Norway, United Kingdom boys continued to have a higher frequency of drunkenness in 2005/2006 than girls.
In terms of policy implications, the researchers argue that the convergence indicates that adoption and implementation of evidence based measures to mitigate the frequency of adolescent drunkenness such as tax increases and restricting alcohol access and advertisement should get the same priority in Eastern European countries as in Western countries. Policy measures that might facilitate decreases in drunkenness such as server training and the promotion of alcohol-free leisure-time activities should be reinforced in Western countries. The gender convergence implies that prevention policy should be less exclusively focused on male adolescents.
*Emmanuel Kuntsche, PhD; Sandra Kuntsche, MA; Ronald Knibbe, PhD; Bruce Simons-Morton, EdD, MPH; Tilda Farhat, PhD, MPH; Anne Hublet, PhD; Pernille Bendtsen, MA; Emmanuelle Godeau, MD, PhD; Zsolt Demetrovics, PhD Cultural and Gender Convergence in Adolescent Drunkenness Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. Published online October 4, 2010