Higher earners far more likely to hit the bottle

HIGH earners such as doctors and lawyers are significantly more likely to drink alcohol than those in manual jobs.

Around seven in 10 people who work in managerial and professional jobs had consumed alcohol in the previous week, according to survey data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS).

This compares with approximately half of routine and manual workers, which include labourers, bar staff, lorry drivers, receptionists and care workers.

The data shows that the highest earners are most likely to drink. Of those earning £40,000 and above, 78.9 per cent said they had drunk in the previous week, compared with 57 per cent of those aged 16 and over across the UK.

Young adults aged 16 to 24 were the most abstemious – 23 per cent of this age group were teetotal.

England has the highest proportion of drinkers in the UK: 57.8 per cent of adults said they had drunk in the previous week compared with 53.5 per cent in Scotland and 50 per cent in Wales.

Dr James Nicholls, director of research and policy development at Alcohol Concern and Alcohol Research UK, said: “A pattern seems to be established in which people who learnt to drink in the Eighties, Nineties and 2000s are carrying their heavier drinking behaviours into middle age; whereas millennials are moving away from an alcohol-centred lifestyle.”