Sociologists from the National Research University Higher School of Economics have calculated that the proportion of Russians aged 14 to 22 who drink alcohol has more than halved over the past 15 years. The study was published in the Bulletin of the National Research University Higher School of Economics (RLMS-HSE) on the Russian Monitoring of the Economic Status and Health of the Population.
Sociologist Valeria Kondratenko, a lecturer in the Department of Economic Sociology at the Higher School of Economics, studied alcohol consumption trends among youth using data from a long-term study of youth for 2006-2019. A total of 27,638 people were included in the analysis.
The analysis showed that the proportion of Russians who drink is decreasing each year, while the proportion of those who drink is increasing. In addition, Russians are moving from the “northern” consumption of alcohol – rare and abundant, further south, that is, to frequent but moderate consumption of soft drinks.
As for youth (14 to 22 years), the proportion of those who drink alcohol has decreased by 30% or more since 2006. In 2006, alcohol dependence among schoolchildren (14-17 years) was 0.5% and among youth (18-22 years) 5%, but now the proportion of schoolchildren who drink has dropped to zero, to 1.1%. Mostly young people drink beer, wine and vodka.
The main factor in reducing alcohol consumption was family. At the same time, young people drink above average if their families are missing. It also affects whether parents drink. A drinking mother, on average, increases a child’s risk of alcohol abuse more than a father does. But fathers can have a stronger influence on boys: In the father-only subsample, boys have an almost double advantage: 45% versus 25.7% girls.
Valeria Kondratenko summarizes, “Parents who drink heavily are more likely to reduce the likelihood of a child becoming a teetotaler, compared with parents who drink heavily or never drink alcohol at all.”