Roughly 71% of adults in the United States have consumed alcohol in the past 12 months. Globally, the picture varies widely: about 52% of men and 35% of women worldwide are current drinkers, with rates climbing much higher in wealthy Western nations and dropping sharply in regions where alcohol is culturally or religiously restricted.
Drinking Rates Across Major Countries
The U.S. figure of 71% places it on the lower end among high-income Western nations. Australia sits at 81%, New Zealand at 80%, and the United Kingdom at 78%. Canada comes in slightly below the U.S. at 69%. Within Europe, Luxembourg reports the highest proportion of drinkers at 84%, while Cyprus and Bulgaria share the lowest at 66%.
These numbers reflect anyone who had at least one drink in the previous year, so they include everything from a single glass of champagne at a wedding to daily drinking. The gap between countries is shaped by cultural norms, religious practices, pricing policies, and legal drinking ages. Countries with large Muslim populations, for instance, tend to report far lower rates because Islam generally prohibits alcohol.
The Gender Gap in Alcohol Use
Men drink at significantly higher rates than women in virtually every country measured. The WHO’s 2019 global data found that 52% of men were current drinkers compared to 35% of women. That 17-point gap holds relatively steady across regions, though it narrows in countries like the U.K. and Australia where women’s drinking rates have risen over the past few decades.
The difference isn’t just about whether people drink at all. Men also tend to drink more per occasion and more frequently. In the U.S., about 17% of adults binge drink, defined as four or more drinks on a single occasion for women or five or more for men. About 6% drink heavily, meaning eight or more drinks per week for women or 15 or more for men.
How Rates Have Shifted Over the Past Decade
The overall trend in most countries has been a slow decline. Between 2013 and 2023, Belgium, Lithuania, and China saw the largest drops in consumption, each reducing by 2.5 liters or more of pure alcohol per person per year. In 2023, the average across wealthy OECD nations was 8.5 liters of pure alcohol per capita annually, roughly equivalent to about 100 bottles of wine spread across every person aged 15 and older.
Not every country followed the downward trend. Mexico, Portugal, Spain, and Romania each saw consumption rise by 2 liters or more over the same period. And in the U.S., there’s evidence that the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021 temporarily pushed consumption upward, particularly among women and people over 40, even as younger adults increasingly chose to drink less or abstain entirely.
That generational shift is one of the more striking patterns. Surveys in multiple countries show adults under 30 are more likely to be non-drinkers than the same age group a decade ago. The reasons are complex, ranging from greater health awareness to changing social habits, but the trend is consistent enough that alcohol companies have noticed and invested heavily in non-alcoholic alternatives.
Education, Income, and Drinking Patterns
People with higher incomes and more education are generally more likely to drink, but less likely to drink to excess. The relationship between education and binge drinking is protective overall: higher educational attainment correlates with lower frequency of binge drinking. However, that protective effect isn’t equally distributed across all populations. Research from Los Angeles found the link between education and reduced binge drinking was strong among non-Hispanic White adults but essentially nonexistent among Hispanic White adults, suggesting that social and structural factors can override the typical pattern.
Income shows a similar split. Wealthier adults are more likely to be current drinkers (they can afford it, and social drinking is common in professional settings), but lower-income adults who do drink face disproportionately higher rates of alcohol-related harm. This is sometimes called the “alcohol harm paradox,” where groups that drink less overall still experience worse health outcomes from drinking due to other compounding factors like limited healthcare access, higher stress, and co-occurring health conditions.
How Many Adults Don’t Drink at All
The flip side of these numbers is substantial. Nearly 30% of American adults haven’t had a drink in the past year, and globally the non-drinking majority is even larger. The WHO tracks “lifetime abstainers,” people aged 15 and older who have never consumed alcohol at any point in their lives. In many parts of South Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa, lifetime abstinence rates exceed 50% of the adult population.
Among people who used to drink but have stopped, reasons range from health concerns and medication interactions to pregnancy, religious conversion, or recovery from alcohol use disorder. Former drinkers represent a meaningful share of the non-drinking population in countries with historically high consumption, and their numbers appear to be growing as public health messaging shifts.
What “No Safe Level” Actually Means
If you’ve seen headlines claiming there’s no safe amount of alcohol, that language comes from the WHO’s current position. Because any alcohol use carries some degree of short-term and long-term health risk, the WHO has stated it’s difficult to define a universally applicable threshold for low-risk drinking. This doesn’t mean a single drink causes measurable harm. It means that at a population level, risk starts at the first drink and increases with every additional one, with no clear cutoff below which risk drops to zero.
For most adults who drink moderately, the absolute increase in risk from light drinking is small. But it isn’t zero, which is why many public health agencies have moved away from language suggesting moderate drinking is “safe” or beneficial. Canada, for instance, revised its guidelines in 2023 to recommend no more than two drinks per week, a dramatic reduction from its previous limits. Other countries still set their guidelines higher, reflecting different interpretations of the same evidence.