Adolescents’ alcohol use is decreasing in Europe but not in all of the countries. Why?

ABSTRACT

Background and Objective

Recent research has suggested a decline in alcohol use among students, however, only a few papers offer to explain why adolescents are drinking less. According to ESPAD, adolescents’ alcohol use is decreasing in Europe, but only Hungary shows an increasing trend. The paper aims to give explanation for the opposite trends.

Methods

The analysis is based on a cross-national dataset, ESPAD in 2003 and 2019, involving 25 countries (N = 157,790). The background variables cover family, school, leisure time, risk behaviors. Chi-square tests, logit explanatory model, KHB method were applied.

Results

In Hungary and in countries with decline the strongest relation with current alcohol use was found for internet use, going out, parental control, daily smoking, and alcohol intake.

Conclusions

In countries with decline and in Hungary, stronger parental control, going out less often, smoking less may contribute to a declining trend while a more widespread internet use may contribute to an increasing trend. Hungary shows the same pattern as the countries with decline, so other factors such as a lack of alcohol policy, permissive attitudes, media representation, health awareness may be behind the different trends. Future research should be directed toward providing further explanations for the opposite trends.

KEYWORDS:

• ESPAD
• alcohol
• trend
• Europe
• students

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the members of the ESPAD Group who collected the national data (http://www.espad.org/report/acknowledgements) and the funding bodies who supported the international coordination of ESPAD: the Italian National Research Council and the EMCDDA. Special thanks are due to the schoolchildren, teachers and national funding bodies who made this project possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. https://hungarytoday.hu/orban-palinka-hungary-household-distillers/.

2. We did not include the following countries in our analysis, because they did not participate in the survey in 2003 and 2019: Albania, Armenia, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Greenland, Germany (Bavaria), Ireland, Kosovo, Liechtenstein, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro North Macedonia, the Russian Federation (Moscow), Serbia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

3. The data source: EUROSTAT Statistics.

Additional information

Funding

The research was funded by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (NKFIH K12794).