This week on the Recombobulator Lab Chris and Jason have brought in Dr Amy Pennay to help answer the question that is puzzling older generations: why aren't the kids boozing it up any more? 

Amy is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Alcohol Policy Research at La Trobe University. Within CAPR she is the Strategic Lead of the 'Intersections of drinking cultures, health and policy' program.She has done extensive research on youth drinking patterns including the 2021 paper entitled Trends in adolescent drinking across 39 high-income countries: exploring the timing and magnitude of decline. 

Amy joked that she has always enjoyed a drink and that as a young student the idea of doing studies in a nightclub seemed very appealing. Chris mentions that friend of the show, psychologist Dr Doug Keene said a lot of people in the field of psychology got into that to better understand their own issues. 

Australia is a ‘dry’ country, you might be surprised to hear. But ‘dry’ in this context has nothing to do with abstaining from alcohol but rather when most people drink said alcohol. A ‘dry’ country is somewhere where people don’t drink a lot during the week but binge on the weekends. Places like France and Italy would be considered ‘wet’ countries as they drink throughout the week in more measured doses. 

Comparing alcohol consumption in Australia to other parts of the world, Aussies drink less than Americans, but are on par with the British. 

The current trend in youth alcohol consumption is that young people in all high income countries are drinking less. English speaking countries are noticing the highest decrease while Mediterranean and Eastern European countries are seeing the least change. This trend started around 2003. 

This pattern is particularly noticeable in under age drinking but young adults of drinking age or older are also drinking less. 

Researchers are struggling to identify policy changes as a driving factor to the change in behaviour. In Australia there have been no significant policy changes to affect behaviour. 

However, education around alcohol has definitely increased and there is a lot more research showing the harms alcohol causes.