{"id":14308,"date":"2014-05-16T15:08:05","date_gmt":"2014-05-16T20:08:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/%year%\/%monthnum%\/%day%\/chart-of-the-week-who-really-drinks-the-most\/"},"modified":"2024-04-14T03:22:16","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T08:22:16","slug":"chart-of-the-week-who-really-drinks-the-most","status":"publish","type":"short-read","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/2014\/05\/16\/chart-of-the-week-who-really-drinks-the-most\/","title":{"rendered":"Chart of the Week: Who really drinks the most?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"drinkers\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n

It’s always nice when a graphic not only presents its information clearly and attractively but when it leads you to look at things in a new way, as this chart from The Economist<\/a> does. Russia and other former Soviet republics and countries of the former Soviet bloc have long been considered among the heaviest-drinking places in the world. And in fact, a new World Health Organization report<\/a> finds that nine of the 10 countries with the highest per-capita consumption — 13 liters or more of pure alcohol per year for everyone aged 15 and up — are former Soviet-bloc countries. (The exception: tiny Andorra, wedged between France and Spain.)<\/p>\n\n

But even in those nations\u00a0not everyone drinks. Indeed, when the analysis is restricted only to those people in a country who do<\/em> drink,\u00a0the consumption rankings change dramatically.<\/p>\n\n

As the chart shows, Chad and the United Arab Emirates have by far the heaviest drinkers in the world, averaging respectively 33.9 and 32.8 liters of pure alcohol a year (or 71.8 and 70.9 grams a day) — even though there aren’t many drinkers in those countries. Russia falls from 4th (total per-capita) to 30th (drinkers only), just ahead of Belarus. As a rule, the biggest disparities between per-capita and drinkers-only consumption are in countries where there are legal prohibitions or\u00a0strong\u00a0religious or cultural taboos against alcohol use.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The countries with the highest per-capita alcohol consumption don’t, as a rule, have the heaviest drinkers. Those tend to be in countries where alcohol is forbidden or strongly discouraged.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"sub_headline":null,"sub_title":"","_prc_public_revisions":[],"_ppp_expiration_hours":0,"_ppp_enabled":false,"ai_generated_summary":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"relatedPosts":[],"_prc_fork_parent":0,"_prc_fork_status":"","_prc_active_fork":0,"datacite_doi":"","datacite_doi_citation":"","_prc_seo_qr_attachment_id":0,"spoken_article_player_enabled":true,"displayBylines":true,"footnotes":"","prc_watchers":[]},"categories":[448,439,105,267],"bylines":[842],"collection":[],"datasets":[],"_post_visibility":[],"formats":[467],"_fund_pool":[],"languages":[],"regions-countries":[515],"research-teams":[525],"workflow-status":[],"class_list":["post-14308","short-read","type-short-read","status-publish","hentry","category-coronavirus-disease-covid-19","category-global-health","category-health-policy","category-medicine-health","bylines-drew-desilver","formats-short-read","regions-countries-united-states","research-teams-global"],"label":"Short Read","post_parent":0,"word_count":219,"canonical_url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/2014\/05\/16\/chart-of-the-week-who-really-drinks-the-most\/","art_direction":false,"_embeds":[],"watchers":[],"table_of_contents":[],"datacite_doi":"","prc_seo_data":{"title":"Chart of the Week: Who really drinks the most?","description":"The countries with the highest per-capita alcohol consumption don't, as a rule, have the heaviest drinkers. Those tend to be in countries where alcohol is forbidden or strongly discouraged.","og_title":"Chart of the Week: Who really drinks the most?","og_description":"The countries with the highest per-capita alcohol consumption don't, as a rule, have the heaviest drinkers. Those tend to be in countries where alcohol is forbidden or strongly discouraged.","schema_type":"Article","noindex":false,"canonical_url":"","primary_terms":[],"custom_schema":[],"og_image":0,"indexnow_submitted_at":null,"gsc_index_status":null},"prepublish_checks":{},"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"relatedPostsOrdered":[],"bylinesOrdered":[{"key":"b4c479ea6e9e1e003b72aecd3177ad30","termId":842}],"acknowledgementsOrdered":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/short-read\/14308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/short-read"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/short-read"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/145"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14308"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/short-read\/14308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103782,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/short-read\/14308\/revisions\/103782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14308"},{"taxonomy":"bylines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bylines?post=14308"},{"taxonomy":"collection","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/collection?post=14308"},{"taxonomy":"datasets","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/datasets?post=14308"},{"taxonomy":"_post_visibility","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_post_visibility?post=14308"},{"taxonomy":"formats","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/formats?post=14308"},{"taxonomy":"_fund_pool","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_fund_pool?post=14308"},{"taxonomy":"languages","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/languages?post=14308"},{"taxonomy":"regions-countries","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/regions-countries?post=14308"},{"taxonomy":"research-teams","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-teams?post=14308"},{"taxonomy":"workflow-status","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/workflow-status?post=14308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}