Publication Highlights

Issue: There is substantial research showing that low socioeconomic position is a predictor of negative outcomes from alcohol consumption. Intuitively one would expect that groups with the highest rate of harms also have the highest rates of risky drinking behaviour and higher consumption. Analysis of existing data indicates a substantial social gradient in hazardous behaviour while drinking. However, the gradient runs in the opposite direction to that expected, with socioeconomically advantaged Australians reporting higher rates of hazardous behaviour.

What we did: Cross-sectional data from 21, 452 current drinkers in the 2010 wave of the Australian National Drug Strategy Household Survey were used. Ten items on risk-taking behaviour while drinking were combined into two risk scores, and zero-inflated Poisson regression was used to assess the relationship between socioeconomic position and risk-taking while controlling for age, sex and alcohol consumption.

What we found: Socioeconomically advantaged respondents reported substantially higher rates of alcohol-related hazardous behaviour than socioeconomically disadvantaged respondents. Controlling for age, sex, volume of drinking and frequency of heavy drinking, respondents living in the most advantaged neighborhoods reported significantly higher rates of hazardous behaviour than those in the least advantaged. A similar pattern was evident for household income.

Implications: Contrary to expectations, socioeconomically advantaged Australians engage in alcohol-related risky behaviour at higher rates than more disadvantaged Australians, even with alcohol consumption controlled. Other factors not directly related to alcohol consumption may be responsible for health inequalities in outcomes with significant alcohol involvement. Equally the lower rates of harms among more advantaged Australians does not mean they are not engaging in risky drinking.