Publication Highlights

Adolescent drinking in Australia, and many other countries, has declined substantially since the early 2000s. This study aimed to test whether these declines have been maintained into adulthood and are consistent across sub-groups defined by sex and socio-economic status.

It found drinking declines were consistent across socio-economic groups on all measures and trends were broadly similar for women and men. More recent birth cohorts had significantly lower levels of drinking and there were significant interactions between birth cohort and age for past-year drinking and regular risky drinking, with cohort differences diminishing as age increased.

The study concluded that lighter drinking adolescent cohorts appear to partly ‘catch up’ to previous cohorts by early adulthood but maintain lower levels of drinking and risky drinking up to age 24.

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