ArticlePloS one2019
Associations between socio-economic factors and alcohol consumption: A population survey of adults in England.
Article in PloS one, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 58 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
58 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Alcohol Consumption Patterns: A Systematic Review of Demographic and Sociocultural Influencing Factors.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Pooled it
- Positive psychological interventions on alcohol use and consequences: Pilot randomized trial in a young adult cannabis-using sample.Journal of substance use and addiction treatment · 2024Trial
- Impact of health warning labels and calorie labels on selection and purchasing of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks: A randomized controlled trial.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2023Trial
- Three-year trajectories of alcohol use among at-risk and among low-risk drinkers in a general population sample of adults: A latent class growth analysis of a brief intervention trial.Frontiers in public health · 2022Trial
- A Data-Driven Exploratory Analysis of the Alcohol-Harm Paradox in South-East Wales.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2026Article
- Does educational attainment modify the relationship between alcohol use and ischemic heart disease mortality? Evidence from the UK biobank.Nutrition, metabolism, and cardiovascular diseases : NMCD · 2026Article
- Associations between life course socioeconomic circumstances and drinking patterns among young and early midlife Finnish public sector employees.Alcohol and alcoholism (Oxford, Oxfordshire) · 2026Article
- Mind the Gap: Exploring Social Inequalities in Alcohol Consumption using Nationally Representative Data from the 2019 and 2021 Health Survey for England.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Moderating effect of resilience on the associations of perceived stress and anxiety with unhealthy alcohol use and insomnia in Chinese hospital staff.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Associations of Alcohol Consumption with All-Cause and Cancer Mortalities in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: A Nationwide Population Cohort Study.Endocrinology and metabolism (Seoul, Korea) · 2025Article
- Socio-economic factors associated with alcohol and cannabis use across waves of the COVID-19 pandemic: an intersectional analysis of a repeated cross-sectional survey.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Optimal control and stability analysis of an alcoholism model with treatment centers.MethodsX · 2025Article
- Alcohol Consumption and Beverage Preferences in a Predominantly Female, Highly Educated Spanish Population: A Sociodemographic and Network Analysis.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Smoking, and to a lesser extent non-combustible nicotine use, is associated with higher levels of alcohol consumption and risky drinking.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Validation of a Questionnaire of Motivations for Moderated and Severe Alcohol Consumption Among College Students.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Small-area spatio-temporal analysis of cancer risk to support effective and equitable cancer prevention.PloS one · 2025Article
- Prevalence and Factors Associated With Alcohol Use Disorder Among People Attending Primary Health Care Facilities in Rupandehi District, Nepal.Global health, epidemiology and genomics · 2025Article
- Delay discounting of rewards and losses, alcohol use, and the influence of socioeconomic factors: A cross-sectional online study in frequent drinkers.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2024Article
- Socioeconomic status, alcohol use and the role of social support and neighbourhood environment among individuals meeting criteria for a mental health problem: a cross-sectional study.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2024Article
- Association between sociodemographics and change in alcohol or tobacco use behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic.PloS one · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
aimTo gain a better understanding of the complex relationships of different measures of social position, educational level and income with alcohol consumption in England.
methodBetween March 2014 and April 2018 data were collected on n = 57,807 alcohol drinkers in England taking part in the Alcohol Toolkit Study (ATS). Respondents completed the AUDIT-C measure of frequency of alcohol consumption, amount consumed on a typical day and binge drinking frequency. The first two questions were used to derive a secondary measure of quantity: average weekly unit consumption. Socio-economic factors measured were: social-grade (based on occupation), employment status, educational qualifications, home and car ownership and income. Models were constructed using ridge regression to assess the contribution of each predictor taking account of high collinearity. Models were adjusted for age, gender and ethnicity.
resultsThe strongest predictor of frequency of alcohol consumption was social-grade. Those in the two lowest occupational categories of social grade (e.g. semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers, and unemployed, pensioners, casual workers) has fewer drinking occasions than those in professional-managerial occupations (β = -0.29, 95%CI -0.34 to -0.25; β = -0.31, 95%CI -0.33 to -0.29). The strongest predictor of consumed volume and binge drinking frequency was lower educational attainment: those whose highest qualification was an A-level (i.e. college/high school qualification) drank substantially more on a typical day (β = 0.28, 95%CI 0.25 to 0.31) and had a higher weekly unit intake (β = 3.55, 95%CI 3.04 to 4.05) than those with a university qualification. They also reported a higher frequency of binge drinking (β = 0.11, 95%CI 0.09 to 0.14). Housing tenure was a strong predictor of all drinking outcomes, while employment status and car ownership were the weakest predictors of most outcomes.
conclusionSocial-grade and educational attainment appear to be the strongest socioeconomic predictors of alcohol consumption indices in England, followed closely by housing tenure. Employment status and car ownership have the lowest predictive power.
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