Alcohol consumption rates in the U.S.: women are drinking more like men, study reveals

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Make no mistake about it, women in the United States still consume less alcohol than men. The ladies are also more likely to cause and experience fewer alcohol-related harms than men.

However, a recent study by the scientists at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) revealed that the gap between the level of alcohol consumption between men and women are closing in. The study was published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

"We found that over that period of time, differences in measures such as current drinking, number of drinking days per month, reaching criteria for an alcohol use disorder, and driving under the influence of alcohol in the past year, all narrowed for females and males," said study lead author Dr. Aaron White, NIAAA's senior scientific advisor to the director, in a press release from the National Institutes of Health website. "Males still consume more alcohol, but the differences between men and women are diminishing."

Between the study period of 2002 and 2012, the research team found out that the percentage of people who drank alcohol in the previous 30 days increased from 44.9 percent to 48.3 percent among women, while those in men decreased from 57.4 percent to 56.1 percent.

For the same period, the average number of drinking days in the past month also increased for females, from 6.8 to 7.3 days and also showed a decrease among males from 9.9 to 9.5 days.

NIAAA Director George F. Koob, Ph.D, also said that the study confirms what other recent reports have suggested about the changing patterns of alcohol use by men and women in the U.S.

He also noted that the increasing alcohol use by females is particularly concerning given that women are at greater risk than men of a variety of alcohol-related health effects, including liver inflammation, cardiovascular disease, neurotoxicity and cancer.

However, although there is a rise in the alcohol consumption among women, the study also showed that men are, still, more likely to be arrested for driving under the influence, to be hospitalized with alcohol poisoning and to die in alcohol related traffic accidents, according to NBC News.

"The prevalence of combining alcohol with marijuana during the last drinking occasion among 18 to 25-year-old male drinkers increased from 15 percent to 19 percent, while the prevalence of combining alcohol with marijuana during the last drinking occasion among 18 to 25-year-old female drinkers remained steady at about 10 percent," White also added.