Drinking rates have been steadily declining nationwide, with an August Gallup poll showing that only 54% of Americans ever consume alcohol—sharply down from 67% as recently as 2010. Now, a study in the Annals of Internal Medicine takes those findings a step further, reporting that younger adults in the Millennial and Gen Z cohorts—people born from 1981 to 2012—are driving that trend. Meanwhile, older Americans, aged 50-64, are actually consuming more alcohol than they used to, with rates increasing by more than one third since 2018.
Brian Lee, a hepatologist and liver transplant specialist with Keck Medicine of USC, in a statement that accompanied the release of the report. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. The survey consists of several face-to-face interviews throughout the year.
In the current study, researchers looked at whether and how much respondents drink; heavy drinking, for instance, is defined as five or more drinks per day or 16 or more per week for males, and four or more drinks per day or eight or more drinks per week for females. Americans saw a 2% drop in overall drinking and 8% in heavy drinking in just the 2022 to 2024 window. Total drinking dropped most dramatically among Gen Z, with rates falling nearly 6% from 2022 to 2024, compared with about 2% for Millennials.
Heavy drinking fell by roughly a fifth in both generations. Older Americans, however, went in the opposite direction, with those in the 50 to 64 age group seeing an increase of 4% in overall drinking, and 36% spike in heavy drinking from 2018 to 2024. The reasons for the changes are not clear, but greater public awareness of the health risks of drinking may play a role in alcohol’s overall decline.
Alcohol has been linked to 62 different diseases, according to the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, especially liver disease, cardiovascular disease, and various forms of cancer. But not all Americans are equally aware of alcohol’s health harms.
Past Research from 2024 found that far more younger people know that alcohol negatively affects health compared to older adults. Some of that knowledge may track back to the COVID-19 pandemic. Public information campaigns are just one of the possible causes of the drop in drinking among young people.
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