A new study from the UK found that women who are highly educated generally drink greater amounts of alcohol than their less educated counterparts.
The study, done by researchers at the London School of Economics (LSE), tracked the lifestyles of more than 9,000 thirty-nine-year-old women and men who were all born in the UK during the same week in 1970.
According to an article on Telegraph.co.uk, “The more educated women are, the more likely they are to drink alcohol on most days and to report having problems due to their drinking patterns,” the study reports. “The better-educated appear to be the ones who engage the most in problematic patterns of alcohol consumption.”
Francesca Borgonovi and Maria Huerta, the authors of the study, suggest a few potential explanations about the findings. Highly educated women have perhaps experienced:
- greater postponement of childbearing and its responsibilities among the better educated
- more intensive social life that encourages alcohol intake
- greater engagement into traditionally male spheres of life
- greater social acceptability of alcohol use and abuse
- more exposure to alcohol use during formative years
In addition to looking at academic achievement and school test results, researchers gave a survey asking questions such as: ”Have you ever felt you should cut down on your drinking?” and “Have you ever had a drink first thing in the morning to steady your nerves or get rid of a hangover?”
They found that women with some educational qualifications were 71 per cent more likely to drink on most days compared to women with no qualifications, while women with degree-level qualifications were 86 per cent more likely to do so.
Higher educated women were 1.7 times more likely to have a drinking problem than their less-well-educated counterparts, while those who scored highly in school tests were also at greater risk of having drinking problems.
A similar link between educational achievement and alcohol consumption is seen among men, but the correlation is less strong, according to the report, published in the journal Social Science and Medicine.
Photo: by David Burgess, Telegraph.co.uk
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Who knew that graduating from Syracuse U was risky behavior? Anyone who was there when the university still served and made money on alcohol.