American Drinking Habits … Haven’t Really Changed
For a number of years, the beer industry has been warning that Americans are giving up beer for other boozy choices. You’ve probably read the analysis: liquor and flavored malt beverages are the sexy new thing. The youngest drinkers are the most fickle, and anyway, they might be giving up booze altogether. Some of this is worry has a reasonable foundation, but by at least one measure this is the great shift that wasn’t.
Stability is the norm
Gallup has been polling Americans on their drinking habits for the better part of a century. They’ve asked fairly consistent questions for 30 years. In those many decades, we have seen one substantial shift, but it came twenty years ago and things have been remarkably stable since.
The percentage of Americans who say they drink has averaged 63% of the population since 1939. That number has bounced around, but has gotten very consistent in the new century. In this nearly quarter-century, 60-67% of Americans say they drink. In 2023, it was 62%, dead consistent with historical averages. A decade ago, 35% of American drinkers said they’d had a drink in the past 24 hours; in 2023, 32% had.
They Still Like Beer, Really They Do
The bigger finding (or nonfinding), is how little preferences among beer, wine, and liquor have changed. A noticeable shift did happen around the turn of the century. Until then, nearly half of Americans preferred beer to wine and liquor. Wine started picking up drinkers in the aughts, and in recent years liquor has seen nice gains. In 2005, the percentage of Americans favoring beer slipped below 40% for the first time, and it has bounced around on either side of that line since. In 2023 it was 37%. (For the first time ever, wine has fallen behind liquor.)
Those fickle Zoomers and young millennials abandoning beer? Not so much. In 2013, 36% of young people preferred beer. In 2023? 37%. (Tracking overall changes from turn-of-the-century patterns, in 2003c it was 44%.) So the percentage of Americans who drink has remained consistent since just after Prohibition, and their favored beverage has remained consistent this century.
Caveats
These survey results don’t reliably capture how much Americans are drinking, and on this dimension, the numbers hint at a major—and welcome—shift. Only 19% of Americans admit to “sometimes” drinking too much. That figure has been on a steady decline from thirty years ago, when almost a third occasionally overindulged (29.5%, on average for the decade prior to 1994).
Based on sales figures, we know consumption has fallen steadily in recent decades. And here alcohol industry-watchers may have a point for concern. If the average drinker put back three drinks a week in 2000 and now consumes two or 2.5, that would substantially dent revenues. (Though keep in mind that a majority of alcohol is consumed by a small minority of heavy drinkers, so an “average” drinker cutting their consumption would dent revenues less.)
Of course, we should welcome declining consumption. The pathologies associated with booze are real and substantial, and a country drinking moderately and safely is a healthy country, even if alcohol industries have to take a haircut to get there.