In the long run,
the facts are on the side of the optimists.
To paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr., the arc of history bends toward progress. But progress doesn't just happen. People work hard to discover ways forward.
The What Works Initiative
highlights positive outcomes on difficult issues – and how people achieved them.
The world is drinking less alcohol, especially young adults in the heaviest-drinking countries of Europe and North America. The reasons: mostly rising health consciousness, but also increasingly attractive alternatives such as mocktails and non-alcoholic beer.
Some effects are predictable, such as fewer alcohol-related emergency-room visits and auto accidents. But the decline also comes up as a possible explanation for why more people say they feel safe walking alone at night – fewer drunk drivers, fewer drunken encounters. To some extent, the trend is moving social life out of late night – bars and nightclubs – and into daylight.
The share of Americans who drink at all, 54 percent, is at an all-time low. The share who told Gallup this summer that they sometimes drink more than they should – 13 percent – is just a third of the share in 1989.
The decline of drinking is not universal. Consumption is up in India, Mexico, and some other emerging markets as incomes and consumer options increase there. But those upticks do not offset the decline elsewhere. Total global consumption has been ticking downward in recent decades, and alcohol industry research does not expect that to change.
Sources: Gallup; World Health Organization; European Brain Council; IWSR