About 44% of adults worldwide drank alcohol in the past 12 months, based on 2019 data from the World Health Organization. That means 56% of the global adult population abstained entirely. While nearly half the world drinks to some degree, the patterns behind that number vary dramatically by gender, geography, and income level.
The Global Picture
The 44% figure represents adults aged 15 and older who reported consuming at least some alcohol within the previous year. This includes everything from occasional social drinking to daily heavy use. It does not capture people who drank at some point in their lives but stopped, nor does it reflect how much or how often current drinkers consume alcohol. A person who had a single glass of wine at a wedding counts the same as someone who drinks every day.
That 56% abstention rate is higher than many people expect, especially if you live in a culture where drinking is common. But large portions of the global population live in countries where alcohol is restricted by law, discouraged by religion, or simply not part of everyday social life. Much of the Middle East, North Africa, and South and Southeast Asia have abstention rates well above the global average.
The Gender Gap Is Shrinking
Men have historically been far more likely to drink than women, but that gap has narrowed significantly over the past century. Among people born in the early 1900s, women were only 45% as likely as men to drink alcohol. Women in that generation were just 33% as likely to develop problem drinking patterns and 28% as likely to experience health consequences from alcohol.
Among people born in the late 1990s, those numbers look very different. Women are now 90% as likely as men to drink, 80% as likely to be problem drinkers, and 70% as likely to experience alcohol-related health issues. The convergence has been especially pronounced in high-income countries, where cultural norms around women and alcohol have shifted substantially. This trend has real public health implications, since women face higher biological vulnerability to alcohol’s effects at lower consumption levels than men.
Income Level Shapes Drinking Patterns
The relationship between wealth and alcohol use is more complicated than “richer countries drink more,” though that’s partly true. A study of 55 low- and middle-income countries published in The Lancet Global Health found distinct patterns depending on both income level and gender.
Among men, current drinking was most common in lower-middle-income countries, where about 50% reported drinking. Heavy episodic drinking (defined as consuming large amounts in a single session) was also highest in this group, at roughly 63%. Among women, current drinking was most prevalent in upper-middle-income countries at about 30%, but heavy episodic drinking was actually highest in low-income countries at around 37%. That last finding is notable: in the poorest countries, women who do drink are more likely to drink heavily per occasion, even though fewer women drink overall.
High-income countries generally have higher rates of regular drinking but also more access to treatment and prevention programs. The health burden of alcohol, however, falls disproportionately on lower-income populations, where healthcare systems are less equipped to handle alcohol-related injuries and chronic disease.
Global Alcohol Deaths
Alcohol contributed to 2.6 million deaths worldwide in 2019, accounting for 4.7% of all deaths that year. The majority of those deaths occurred among men. The causes range from liver disease and cancer to traffic accidents, violence, and drowning. Alcohol is also a significant contributor to disability: years lost to poor health from drinking add up across conditions like depression, cardiovascular disease, and digestive disorders.
That 4.7% figure places alcohol ahead of many individual diseases as a cause of death globally. For context, it means roughly 1 in every 21 deaths worldwide is linked to drinking.
Consumption Is Rising, Not Falling
Despite the WHO setting a target for countries to reduce alcohol consumption by 20% by 2030, the world is moving in the opposite direction. Global per-person consumption was 6.5 liters of pure alcohol in 2017 and is projected to rise to 7.6 liters by 2030. Most countries are not on track to meet the WHO’s reduction goal.
The increase is driven largely by rising consumption in middle-income countries, particularly in Southeast Asia and parts of Africa, where economic growth and urbanization are changing drinking cultures. Meanwhile, some high-income countries in Europe have seen modest declines, and younger generations in several Western nations report drinking less than their parents did. These regional shifts mean the global average masks two simultaneous trends: drinking is declining in some of the heaviest-consuming populations while rising in places where it was historically less common.