Alcohol use in early and late adolescence among the Birth to Twenty cohort in Soweto, South Africa

Abstract

Background : Alcohol is a risk factor for the leading causes of mortality and morbidity among young people Globally. Youth drinking, initiated in early adolescence and continued into early adulthood, is influenced by maternal socio-demographic factors and maternal education. Limited prospective data exists in South Africa on the prevalence of alcohol use during adolescence and adolescent and maternal socio-demographic correlates.

Objective : To examine the prevalence of lifetime alcohol use during early (13 years) and late (18 years) adolescence in Soweto, South Africa, and its association with child and maternal socio-demographic factors.

Methods Data on alcohol use in early adolescence (age 13 years) and late adolescence (age 18 years) were collected using self-completed pen and paper and self-completed computer-based questionnaires, respectively. Univariate analyses were conducted on child (gender and number of school years repeated by grade 7), maternal socio-demographic correlates (education, marital status, and age), and household socioeconomic status (SES). Bivariate logistic regression analyses examined associations between alcohol use and all child and maternal socio-demographic factors. Multivariate logistic regression analyses were conducted on all the variables found to be significantly (pB0.10) associated with alcohol use to examine the predictive value on alcohol use at early and late adolescence.

Results : Lifetime alcohol use increased from 22% at early adolescence to 66% at late adolescence. In multivariate analyses, gender, maternal education, and SES predicted lifetime alcohol use at early adolescence, while gender, maternal education, marital status, and SES were predictive of the same at late adolescence.

Conclusion : This study aids researchers and practitioners to identify maternal and child socio-demographic risk profiles for alcohol use to inform policies and programmes.

• adolescent alcohol use
• alcohol prevalence
• maternal correlates
• socio-economic status

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Matthew Mainwaring for technical assistance provided during the course of writing this paper.

Special thanks are due to the Carnegie Corporation Transformation Programme at the University of the Witwatersrand for the funding provided to support this paper, and the funders of Bt20: University of the Witwatersrand , South African Medical Research Council, Human Sciences Research Council, and the Wellcome Trust.

Notes

¹The terms ‘white, black, Indian/Asian, and coloured’ originate from the apartheid era. They refer to demographic markers and do not signify inherent characteristics. Their continued use in South Africa is retained to track transformation and to identify vulnerable sections of the population to be targeted for prevention and intervention programmes.

²The apartheid era was characterised by a separatist regime, during which the government of the day legitimised the differentiation of people based on race difference, whites, Indians, colored (mixed ancestry), and blacks (of African descent).