Wet and dry generations: what happens with social change

in drinking?

Robin RoomCentre for Alcohol Policy Research, Turning Point, Fitzroy, Australia;

Melbourne School of Population & Global Health, University of Melbourne; and Centre for Social Research on Alcohol & Drugs, Stockholm University

robinr@turningpoint.org.au

Presented at an Alcohol Research UK conference, “Alcohol through the life course”, London ,18 March 2014

Historically, there have been big changes in drinking, some quite fast

1900-1913:A temperance high-point

1914-1918:Wartime

1939-1932:Depression

1960-1975:Postwar prosperity

1995-2005:Millenial boom

Litres of pure alcohol consumption per capita in the UK, 1900-2006 [Tighe, A. (ed.) (2007) Statistical Handbook 2007, Brewing Publications]

Factors include:*urbanisation,* industrialisation,* change in women’s status,* red wine as demerit peasant food, * EU agriculture policies rise in minimum price

(A. Allamani & F. Prina, eds., Why the decrease in consumption of alcoholic beverages in Italy?... Contemp Drug Probs 34:187-378, 2007.)

YEARS

WINE LT.

BEER LT.

SPIRITS LT. PURE

ALCOHOL

TOTAL ALCOHOL LT. PURE

ALCOHOL 1861-1870 83.9 0.2 0.4 10.5 1871-1880 90.4 0.4 0.4 11.3 1881-1890 95.4 0.7 0.8 12.3 1891-1900 89.2 0.5 0.6 11.3 1901-1910 119.6 1.1 0.5 14.9 1911-1920 112.1 2 0.5 14.0 1921-1930 112.7 3.3 0.6 14.3 1931-1940 88.2 1.3 0.2 10.8 1941-1950 74.8 1.7 0.4 9.4 1951-1960 100.6 3.7 0.9 13.1

1961 108.2 6.1 1.2 14.4 1965 110.1 8.6 1.4 15.0 1970 113.7 11.3 1.8 15.9 1975 104 12.8 1.8 14.8 1980 92.9 16.7 1.9 13.7 1985 75 21.9 1.3 11.2 1990 62.5 25.1 1 9.5 1995 55.7 25.4 0.8 9.2 2002 51.0 28.2 0.4 7.4 2003 50.5 30.1 0.8 7.4

Italy 1970-2000: alcohol consumption is halved

Waves of Temperance:1840s, 1860-1880,1910-1918

Upsurges:1850s1880-19101940-1980

Alcohol consumption in the US 1830s-1970s(indirect measures during Prohibition)

(Moore & Gerstein, eds., Alcohol & Public Policy, National Academy Press, 1981)

Schematic diagram of factors influencing consumption levels

Factors pushing down: Economic depression Total war footing Taxes Controls on availability/access Societal responses to problems

Factors tending to stabilize: Cultural customs Habit-forming nature of drinking

Factors pushing up: Rising purchasing power Deregulation Greater availability/access Advertising/promotion

Factors pushing either way: Structural changes Drinking norms & cultural politics Social movements

Level of alcohol

consumption

Adapted from: Room, Österberg, Ramstedt & Rehm, Explaining change & stasis in alcohol consumption. Addiction Research & Theory 17:562-576, 2009

An example of cultural change in drinking: U.S. college students 1900-1930

• Strong downward trend after 1900:– College student opinion turned against drinking:

“a strong and increased questioning of the place and value of alcoholic liquors in the community and in personal use, because of their many unfortunate social consequences” -- Harry Warner, “Alcohol in college life: historical perspectives” in Maddox, ed., The Domesticated Drug (1970)

• Reversal in the 1920s:– The age of “flappers: and the “roaring Twenties”

Vanguards of the reversal: a minority in the generation born 1888-1900

Birthdates of American authors with reputations as heavy drinkers or alcoholics

1809 Edgar Allen Poe.......1869 Edward A. Robinson.......1876 Jack London.......1879 Wallace Stevens1880........1885 Ring Lardner - Sinclair Lewis.......1888 Raymond Chandler - Eugene O’Neill1889 Robert Benchley1890.......1892 Edna St. Vincent Millay1893 J.J. Marquand - Dorothy Parker1894 e.e. cummings -Dashiell Hammett1895 Edmund Wilson1896 F. Scott Fitzgerald1897 William Faulkner.......1899 Hart Crane - Ernest Hemingway.......1900 Thomas Wolfe.......1902 John Steinbeck.......1905 John O’Hara.......1908 Theodore Roethke.......1910.......1914 John Berryman - Tennessee Williams

Approximate birthdates, those contributing storiesto the “big book” of Alcoholics Anonymous 1st Edition (1939) 2nd Edition (1955)1879 x x1880 xx.......1882 x.......1888 xx x1889 x1890 x1891 x.......1893 x.......1895 xx1896 xxxxx xx1897 xxx1898 xx1899 x1900 xxxx xxx x1901 x xx1902 xx1903 x1904 x xx.......1906 x1910.......1914 x.......1917 x.......1928 x mean birth year: 1895 1903

(Room, A ‘reverence for strong drink’ J Stud Alc 45:540 546, 1984)‑

(Room, Alcoholism and AA in U.S. films, 1945 1962. ‑ J Stud Alc 50:368 383, 1989)‑

The vanguard born in 1888-1900 became the cultural heroes of and models for the

next generation

• “The present trend (1938) is a reversal of the trend of 100 years. It is toward a wider diffusion of drink practices and greater regularity among larger numbers. For a comparable situation one must turn back ... more than a century ago”. (Warner)

• A new “subterranean ethic began to jell” by the mid-1920s:... “one drank to become drunk, or, failing that, to appear drunk.... In addition, one drank in the company of and together with women”.

-- P. Fass, The Damned & the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s. (1977)

The dynamics of generational change: some hypotheses

• The high-tide mark of drinking styles and patterns tend to be set in young adulthood (~18-26), at least in Anglophone societies

• The cultural politics of drinking at the time of young adulthood for an age-cohort tends to set the frame for their drinking later in life– People whose youth did not coincide with the ‘20s never

had our reverence for strong drink.... For us it was a self-righteous pleasure.... Drinking, we proved to ourselves our freedom as individuals and flouted Congress.... It was the only period during which a fellow could be smug and slopped concurrently.

-- AJ Liebling, Liebling Abroad (1981), p. 667.

Some hypotheses (cont’d)

• A generation may use alcohol as a marker to distinguish itself from older cohorts (Bourdieu, Distinction); this can be drinking heavily, as in the US in the ‘20s – or not at all.– Red wine was to be avoided -- just a drink for alcoholics, or

alternatively of their parents, according to French students in their 20s in the 1990s (Freyssinet-Dominjon, J., Wagner, A.C. L'alcool en fête: manières de boire de la nouvelle jeunesse étudiante. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2003)

• In such circumstances, transmission down (from older siblings, and older cohorts, etc.) breaks down

Some hypotheses (continued):Where there is a continuing cultural dynamic, a trend of change

from one cohort to the next can continue for a long time.Death rates for liver cirrhosis by age for nonwhite (mostly Black) birth cohorts, same region & dates

Mainstream US Temperance shifted from New England Abolitionists to Southern racists. At the same time there was Black migration to the cities, and the “wet” Harlem Renaissance. (Herd D, Migration, cultural transformation & the rise of Black cirrhosis mortlaaty. Brit. J Addic 80:397-410, 1987.)

Some hypotheses (cont’d)• A turnaround at the population level in amounts of

drinking may be led by particular cohorts– e.g., middle-aged cohorts seem to have led the

downturn in US drinking after 1980 (see: Kerr WC et al., Age-period-cohort modelling ...Divergence in younger and older adult trends. Addiction 104:27037, 2009)

– “drying” social movements of the middle-aged in the early 1980s:

• Rise of an alcoholism treatment establishment & “experience counselors”, consulted as experts

• Mothers Against Drunk Driving movement• Adult Children of Alcoholics and allied movements

(Room, R. Changes in the cultural position of alcohol in the US: The contribution of alcohol-oriented movements, working paper, 1987.)

Some tentative conclusions• There are sometimes substantial changes on

the level of drinking in a society– Typically the change is more about the number of

occasions of drinking than about the style of drinking (Room, The impossible dream? Routes to reducing alcohol problems in a temperance culture. J Subst Abuse 4:91-106, 1992. http://www.robinroom.net/imposs.pdf)

– The changes may be led by particular birth-cohorts (“wet” and “dry” generations) changing before others or where others do not change

– “alcohol through the life course” may differ by generation

Such conclusions imply differential changes in drinking in different segments of the population

• This does not conform to Skog’s theory of the “collectivity of drinking cultures”:– “changes over time (in a specific population) typically take the form of a

parallel displacement of the whole distribution” (Skog, O-J, “Commentary...” Drug & Alc Review 20:325-331, 2001)

• Challenged on the theory, Skog acknowledged a “ceteris paribus” condition:– “if there are barriers for the diffusion process [of mutual influence on

drinking], for instance between different social-economic strata ... or gender differences.”

– “Since we do not live in a static world, the relative differences between subgroups ... cannot be expected to remain fixed and the same everywhere and at all times. Consequently, group means could change at different rates and in different directions as societies change.” (Skog, Commentary...”)

Our challenge: to develop and test more nuanced theories of sociocultural

change in drinking • Paying attention to social & societal responses to

drinking as well as to the development of drinking customs– “Long waves” of alcohol consumption (and shorter?)– But also long waves of societal reaction to drinking problems– What works in curtailing a change adverse to public health

(e.g., Swedish reversal on “medium beer”?)– What policies are more and less likely to evoke a reactive

rebound in the population or a subpopulation? – How can policy and regulation enhance a favourable trend?