Percent of persons 12 years of age and older reporting current heavy alcohol consumption.

Sub-categories

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Headline data

Percent of US persons 12 years of age and older reporting current heavy alcohol consumption
Year Value
2015 6.8
2016 6.3
2017 6.4

Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)/Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)/National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH)

Geographical Area:

Unit of Measurement:

Footnote:

This table provides metadata for the actual indicator available from United States statistics closest to the corresponding global SDG indicator. Please note that even when the global SDG indicator is fully available from American statistics, this table should be consulted for information on national methodology and other American-specific metadata information.

Indicator

Percent of persons 12 years of age and older reporting current binge alcohol consumption; Percent of persons 12 years of age and older reporting current heavy alcohol consumption.
Organisation

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)/Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)/National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH)
Unit of measure

Current (past month or past 30 days) binge alcohol and heavy alcohol use data. The 30 days reference the date of interview completed through the annual NSDUH data collection.
Data sources

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)/Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)/National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) - https://www.samhsa.gov/data/population-data-nsduh/reports
Data providers

Peter Tice
Comment and limitations

The 2015 and 2016 NSDUH binge alcohol and heavy alcohol use data are not comparable to prior survey years (2002-2014 NSDUH) due to methodological changes, including changing the definition begininning in 2015 for females from five to four drinks. See NSDUH Methodological Resource Books (MRB) for detailed description of each annaual NSDUH survey (https://www.samhsa.gov/data/population-data-nsduh/reports?tab=39).
Method of computation

The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) is an annual survey of the civilian, noninstitutionalized population of the United States aged 12 years old or older. The survey covers residents of households and individuals in noninstitutional group quarters (e.g., shelters, boarding houses, college dormitories, migratory workers’ camps, halfway houses). The survey excludes people with no fixed address (e.g., homeless people not in shelters), military personnel on active duty, and residents of institutional group quarters, such as jails, nursing homes, mental institutions, and long-term care hospitals. The NSDUH employs a stratified multistage area probability sample that is designed to be representative of both the nation as a whole and for each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Actual indicator available - description

Current_binge_alcohol is defined as drinking five or more drinks (for males) and four or more drinks (for females) on the same occasion (i.e., at the same time or within a couple hours of each other) on at least 1 day in the past 30 days (past month). Current_heavy_alcohol is defined as binge drinking on the same occasion on each of 5 or more days in the past 30 days (past month). All current (past month) heavy alcohol users are also current (past month) binge alcohol users.
Date of national source publication

September 2017
Periodicity

The NSDUH is an annual data collection with data collection occurring continuously from early January through late December.
Scheduled update by national source

Results from the 2017 NSDUH are scheduled for release by September 2018.
Date metadata updated

2017-10-10
Time period

2015 and 2016. Comparable 2002-2014 NSDUH data are not available.

This table provides information on metadata for SDG indicators as defined by the UN Statistical Commission. Complete global metadata is provided by the UN Statistics Division.

Indicator

Indicator 3.5.2: Alcohol per capita consumption (aged 15 years and older) within a calendar year in litres of pure alcohol
Target

Target 3.5: Strengthen the prevention and treatment of substance abuse, including narcotic drug abuse and harmful use of alcohol
Organisation

World Health Organization (WHO)

Definition and concepts

Definitions:

Harmful use of alcohol, defined according to the national context as alcohol per capita consumption (aged 15 years and older) within a calendar year in litres of pure alcohol.

Total alcohol per capita (15+ years) consumption (APC) is defined as the total (sum of three-year average recorded APC and unrecorded APC adjusted for tourist consumption) amount of pure alcohol consumed per adult (15+ years), in a calendar year, in litres of pure alcohol. Recorded alcohol consumption refers to official statistics at country level (production, import, export, and sales or taxation data), while the unrecorded alcohol consumption refers to alcohol which is not taxed and is outside the usual system of governmental control, such as home or informally produced alcohol (legal or illegal), smuggled alcohol, surrogate alcohol (which is alcohol not intended for human consumption), or alcohol obtained through cross-border shopping (which is recorded in a different jurisdiction). Tourist consumption takes into account tourists visiting the country and inhabitants visiting other countries. Positive figures denote alcohol consumption of outbound tourists being greater than alcohol consumption by inbound tourists, negative numbers the opposite. Tourist consumption is based on UN statistics, and data are provided by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

Concepts:

Recorded alcohol per capita (15+) consumption of pure alcohol is calculated as the sum of beverage-specific alcohol consumption of pure alcohol (beer, wine, spirits, other) from different sources. The first priority in the decision tree is given to government national statistics; second are country-specific alcohol industry statistics in the public domain based on interviews or fieldwork (GlobalData (formerly Canadean), International Wine and Spirit Research (IWSR), Wine Institute; historically World Drink Trends) or data from the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV); third is the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations' statistical database (FAOSTAT), and fourth is data from alcohol industry statistics in the public domain based on desk review.

For countries where the data source is FAOSTAT, the unrecorded consumption may be included in the recorded consumption. As for the beverage-specific categories, beer includes malt beers, wine includes wine made from grapes and vermouth, spirits include all distilled beverages, and other includes one or several other alcoholic beverages, such as fermented beverages made from sorghum, maize, millet, rice, or cider, fruit wine, fortified wine, etc. For unrecorded APC, the first priority in the decision tree is given to nationally representative empirical data; these are often general population surveys in countries where alcohol is legal. Second are specific empirical investigations, and third is expert opinion supported by periodic survey of experts at country level using modified Delphi-technique.

For recorded APC, if beverage volumes are not available in litres of pure alcohol, they are transformed into litres of pure alcohol. The alcohol content (% alcohol by volume) is considered to be as follows: beer (barley beer 5%), wine (grape wine 12%; must of grape 9%, vermouth 16%), spirits (distilled spirits 40%; spirit-like 30%), and other (sorghum, millet, maize beers 5%; cider 5%; fortified wine 17% and 18%; fermented wheat and fermented rice 9%; other fermented beverages 9%).

Unrecorded APC is estimated using a regression analysis. Fractional response random intercepts regression models, which account for clustering of data points within countries, are used to estimate what percentage of total APC is due to unrecorded APC. Univariate models are fitted for alcohol consumption statistics and other predictors.

The litres of alcohol consumed by tourists (15 years of age and older) in a country are based on the number of tourists who visited a country, the average amount of time they spent in the country, and how much these people drink on average in their countries of origin (estimated based on per capita consumption of recorded and unrecorded alcohol). Furthermore, tourist alcohol consumption also accounts for the inhabitants of a country consuming alcohol while visiting other countries (based on the average time spent outside of their country (for all people 15 years and older) and the amount of alcohol consumed in their country of origin). These estimations assume the following: (1) that people drink the same amounts of alcohol when they are tourists as they do in their home countries, and (2) that global tourist consumption is equal to 0 (and thus tourist consumption can be either net negative or positive).

Unit of measure

Litres of pure alcohol

Data providers

Ministries of Health; National statistical bureau/agencies (data on alcohol production and trade/sales); National monitoring centres on alcohol and drug use; National academic and monitoring centres concerned with population-based surveys of risk factors to health.

Comment and limitations

The indicator is feasible and suitable for monitoring purposes as evidenced by availability of data from 190 countries and inclusion of this indicator in global, regional and national monitoring frameworks. This is the key indicator for alcohol exposure in populations. The data available (based on production, import, export, and sales or taxation) do not enable the disaggregation of alcohol per capita consumption (APC) by sex or age; to this end, other data sources, such as survey data, are needed. The estimation of unrecorded APC remains a challenge, and triangulation of data from different sources as well as Delphi-techniques are used for increasing validity of estimates. In recent time, the number of research activities focused on improvement of the estimates of unrecorded alcohol consumption as well as their geographical coverage have increased substantially. As a result, it leads to a more accurate assessment of the total amount of alcohol consumed per person per year in a given country.

Method of computation

Numerator: The sum of the amount of recorded alcohol consumed per capita (15+ years), average during three calendar years, in litres of pure alcohol, and the amount of three-year average unrecorded alcohol per capita consumption (15+ years), during a calendar year, in litres of pure alcohol, adjusted for tourist consumption.

Denominator: Midyear resident population (15+ years) for the same calendar year, UN World Population Prospects, medium variant.

Metadata update

2023-03-31
International organisations(s) responsible for global monitoring

World Health Organization (WHO)

Related indicators

Goal 8; Targets 3.4, 3.6

UN designated tier

1
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