Abstract
BackgroundSocial and economic measures in early childhood or adolescence appear to be associated with drinking behavior in young adulthood. Yet, there has been little investigation to what extent drinking behavior of young adults changes within young adulthood when they experience changes in social and economic measures in this significant period of their life.MethodsThe impact of changes in living arrangement, education/employment, income, and deprivation on changes in average weekly alcohol units of consumption and frequency of hazardous drinking sessions per month in young adults was investigated. In total, 1,260 respondents of the New Zealand longitudinal Survey of Family, Income and Employment (SoFIE) aged 18-24 years at baseline were included.ResultsYoung adults who moved from a family household into a single household experienced an increase of 2.32 (95% CI 1.02 to 3.63) standard drinks per week, whereas those young adults who became parents experienced a reduction in both average weekly units of alcohol (β = -3.84, 95% CI -5.44 to -2.23) and in the frequency of hazardous drinking sessions per month (β = -1.17, 95% CI -1.76 to -0.57). A one unit increase in individual deprivation in young adulthood was associated with a 0.48 (95% CI 0.10 to 0.86) unit increase in average alcohol consumption and a modest increase in the frequency of hazardous drinking sessions (β = 0.25, 95% CI 0.11 to 0.39).ConclusionsThis analysis suggests that changes in living arrangement and individual deprivation are associated with changes in young adult’s drinking behaviors. Alcohol harm-minimization interventions therefore need to take into account the social and economic context of young people’s lives to be effective.
Highlights
Social and economic measures in early childhood or adolescence appear to be associated with drinking behavior in young adulthood
In a previous descriptive report, we have shown higher levels of drinking in 15-24 year old males and females who did not have a school qualification, or lived in a flatting situation or in a one person household, whereas young respondents who were inactive in the labour force reported lower levels of alcohol consumption (Carter, Filoche & McKenzie: Alcohol and Young People: A Descriptive Analysis of Changes in Alcohol use in Young New Zealanders from the Statistics New Zealand Longitudinal Survey of Family Income and Employment (SoFIE) and the SoFIE-Health sub-Study, forthcoming)
In this paper, we examined the influence of changes in a range of social and economic factors on changes in average weekly alcohol consumption and frequency of hazardous drinking sessions in young adulthood while adjusting for unmeasured confounding through fixed effect regression methods
Summary
Social and economic measures in early childhood or adolescence appear to be associated with drinking behavior in young adulthood. There is a growing body of longitudinal research on the association between social and economic predictors in early childhood or adolescence with hazardous alcohol use outcomes in young adulthood [8,9,10,11,12,13]. The results from these studies are generally mixed, with some studies suggesting a relation between high income and/or van der Deen et al BMC Public Health 2014, 14:928 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/14/928 education with higher levels of drinking in young adulthood, and other studies suggesting an association between low income or school leaving with hazardous drinking outcomes in young adulthood. A number of studies found strong associations between hazardous alcohol use in young adulthood and social factors such as living situation and family relations [9,10,11,12]
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