Educational Gradients in Drinking Amount and Heavy Episodic Drinking among Working-Age Men and Women in Spain

Marta Donat, Gregorio Barrio, Juan-Miguel Guerras, Lidia Herrero, José Pulido, María-José Belza and Enrique Regidor
Additional contact information
Marta Donat: Escuela Nacional de Sanidad, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, 28029 Madrid, Spain
Gregorio Barrio: Escuela Nacional de Sanidad, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, 28029 Madrid, Spain
Juan-Miguel Guerras: CIBER Epidemiología y Salud Pública (CIBERESP), 28029 Madrid, Spain
Lidia Herrero: Instituto Valenciano de Estadística, 46004 Valencia, Spain
José Pulido: CIBER Epidemiología y Salud Pública (CIBERESP), 28029 Madrid, Spain
María-José Belza: Escuela Nacional de Sanidad, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, 28029 Madrid, Spain
Enrique Regidor: CIBER Epidemiología y Salud Pública (CIBERESP), 28029 Madrid, Spain

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 7, 1-18

Abstract: Alcohol-related harm decreases as socioeconomic position increases, although sometimes the opposite happens with alcohol intake. The objective was to know the educational gradient in monthly measures of drinking amount and heavy episodic drinking (HED) among people aged 25–64 years in Spain from 1997–2017. Such gradient was characterized with the relative percent change (PC) in drinking measures per year of education from generalized linear regression models after adjusting for age, year, region, marital status and immigration status. Among men, the PCs were significantly positive ( p < 0.05) for prevalence of <21 g alcohol/day (2.9%) and 1–3 HED days (1.4%), and they were negative for prevalences of 21–40 g/day (−1.1%), >40 g/day (−6.0%) and ≥4 HED days (−3.2%), while among women they ranged from 3.6% to 5.7%. The gradient in prevalences of >40 g/day (men) and >20 g/day (women) was greatly attenuated after additionally adjusting for HED, while that of ≥4 HED days was only slightly attenuated after additionally adjusting for drinking amount. Among women, the gradients, especially in HED measures, seem steeper in 2009–2017 than in 1997–2007. Educational inequality remained after additional adjustment for income and occupation, although it decreased among women. These results can guide preventive interventions and help explain socioeconomic inequalities in alcohol-related harm.

Keywords: alcohol use; average drinking amount; heavy episodic drinking; educational gradient; sex; Spain (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/7/4371/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/7/4371/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:7:p:4371-:d:787371

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().