Gallup alcohol survey 2022

We’re still not falling down drunk, and older, college educated women are still carrying the wine business on their back

The good news in this year’s Gallup survey about U.S. alcohol consumption is that wine – which got a kick in the teeth last year – doesn’t seem to be any worse off. Which, given how badly it did in the 2021 survey, is very good news.

And we still don’t drink very much, despite all the scare mongering over the past couple of years. Abstention remains around one-third, where it has been for decades, and those of us who do drink are still drinking less: “3.9 drinks in the past seven days, which is roughly in line with the readings historically. In 2003 and 2004, the average was around five drinks a week.”

In other words, a 20 percent decrease. Now how are we going to pass out on the sofa every night with those numbers?

Briefly:

• Wine, beer, and spirits are split, each around 30 percent, as the alcohol of choice. The big loser is beer, which apparently lost share to spirits and continues its decades-long decline as our favorite alcohol.

• Just 17 percent of men say they prefer wine, compared to 49 percent of women. And that’s not as bad as last year, when the numbers were 15 and 49.

• Wine’s age gap is still with us – about one-quarter of those younger than 39 say they prefer wine; the number is 39 percent for those 54 and older.

• My favorite? Wine is ever more bougie – it’s preferred by those who have attended college by a 2-1 margin over high school graduates.

Finally, Gallup included some silliness about how we perceive alcohol; was a respected multi-national trying to appease the neo-Prohibitionists? Not surprisingly, about three-quarters of us say alcohol has some sort of negative affect on society and on drinkers. What did they expect to find? I’d have answered the question the same way, and I write about alcohol for a living.

Photo: Tobias Tullius on Unsplash