According to a study by the Institute of Child Health, women are more likely to binge drink in their twenties if they are well educated. a study of British women who were born in 1958 shows that, on the contrary, less-educated women tend to drink more by the time they hit their early 40s.
Educated women who drink in excess during their 20s may do so because of social pressures at work, the extra money they have to spend and a tendency to delay having children, the researchers believe.
Barbara Jefferis, the author of the study, said although the reasons for the discrepancies were ambiguous, they may have something to do with differences in domestic circumstances.
She wrote:
For example, among women, the less educated are more likely to have children earlier than more-educated women, and also have different types of employment with differing drinking cultures.
A total of 11,500 men and women were asked to estimate how much alcohol they consumed at the ages of 23, 33 and 42. Binge drinking was defined as drinking more than seven units of alcohol during a single sitting for women and 10 units for men.
Women were found out to be about one third more likely to binge drink at 23 than women who had received little education. However, Men who were less educated were found to be three times more likely to binge drink than more highly educated men at all stages of life.
Less-educated women were more than twice as likely to consume a large amount of alcohol in a single sitting as educated women by the age of 42.
The study asked women to recall their drinking habits from their 20’s, 30’s and 40’s. The study also found that women that were not formally educated were heavy drinkers in their 40’s.
A spokesman for Alcohol Concern, Frank Soodeen, said that there were a number of reasons why a heavy-drinking culture had emerged in younger, well-educated women - even though the incidence of binge-drinking in women in all parts of society was on the rise.
He said:
They are often working in an environment of which drinking is part of the culture, and of course, they often have more disposable income than women with fewer qualifications.
However, a lot of this is due to marketing - the alcohol industry has specifically targeted younger professional women, and the emergence of smarter bars is particularly aimed at encouraging women to drink more.
The reasons for binge drinking in older, less well educated women were likely to be linked to anxieties about relationships, and pressures of parenthood, as well as the drinking habits of partners.
But these could also very well be the factors for women that are educated to drink in their 40’s. The difference in access to education often results in a class difference and it is pretty evident that the drinking habits of the upper/middle class differ from that of the working class people. So how much is the study relevant to the general population? Well it is up to one’s own self to make that call.
Via: Netscape
