Women grog report shock

Smart and 40, but drinking too much

THEY are intelligent, middleaged, on high incomes and don’t fit the stereotype of a drunk.

However, highly educated women in their 40s have been sprung as more likely to drink at hazardous levels.

And a new OECD report has found they are helping fuel a concerning rise in alcoholrelated illness and death.

While less educated men are the most likely to be hazardous drinkers worldwide, a surprising new report has found among women the problem is more pronounced among the well educated.

In Australia, the probability of an average male aged 40 drinking at hazardous levels is highest among men with a medium level of education.

Men with a low education are the least likely to binge drink.

Among Australian women of the same age the highly educated are one and a half times more likely to drink at hazardous levels than women with low education, the OECD says.

“It’s what most of us [alcohol experts know] but not what middle Australia wants to believe,” Foundation of Alcohol Research and Education chief Michael Thorn says.

Thorn says these women were more likely to be heavy drinkers because they have the disposable income spare to spend on alcohol.

And while they don’t binge drink, their alcohol consumption is higher because they consume three to four drinks a day on more days during the week, putting their health at risk.

The OECD’s report on tackling the harms of alcohol finds alcohol-related injury and illness are now the fifth leading cause of death in developed countries, up from eighth place in 1990.

“Every 10 seconds somebody dies from a problem related to alcohol and many more develop an alcohol-related disease,” the report says.

Alcohol kills more people worldwide than HIV/AIDS, violence and tuberculosis combined, the report says.