Wednesday, October 06, 2010

The Rich: Our Binge Drinkers

Interesting:

Among adults, young men, ages 18-34, are the biggest bingers. Whites are the ethnic group most likely to binge. And when you take a look at income, the bingeing prevalence was highest — 19 percent — in households making $75,000 a year. Bingeing was lowest at the other end of the income spectrum — 12 percent for people in households making less than $25,000.

Why would rich people be the biggest bingers? For people who only have cell phones, the numbers are higher:

Finally, the CDC's main conclusions about binge drinking come from a phone survey of more than 400,000 people conducted over landlines. A smaller, though still big, survey of nearly 16,000 people with cellphones showed an even higher rate of binge drinking — about 21 percent.

So rich young people drink a lot.  Do the rich drink more because they can afford it? Do we all wish we could drink more but we just can't work it out? Unless we are really poor of course.