Alcohol Facts and Statistics National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism NIAAA

The second aim was to examine the extent to which acculturation orientations moderate associations between domains of bicultural self-efficacy and alcohol use severity. Liver disease is an often-cited example of the disproportionate effect of alcohol on health across ethnic groups. Native Americans have higher mortality rates for alcoholic liver disease than other U.S. ethnic groups (see figure). According to the National Vital Statistical Reports (Miniño et al. 2011) on 2008 U.S. deaths, age-adjusted death rates attributed to alcoholic liver disease for Native American men and women were 20.4 and 15.3 per 100,000 people, respectively, compared with 6.9 and 2.4 per 100,000 for men and women in the general population.

1. Some ethnic groups have higher rates of alcohol consumption, putting them at greater risk of drinking harms.
2. Weekly heavy drinking was highest among Native Americans (21.9 percent), followed by Blacks (16.4 percent), Whites (16.3 percent), Hispanics (11.8 percent), and Asians (9.8 percent).
3. One explanation is the higher rates of risky drinking for some minority ethnic groups (e.g., Hispanics and Native Americans).
4. Mexican Americans have a lower abstention rate and relatively higher frequency of consuming five or more drinks on occasion compared with Puerto Ricans.

Drinking Patterns and Other Determinants of Risk for Alcohol-Related Harms

This may be because of social norms governing drinking behavior in Mexican culture, which are more liberal for men than for women (Roizen, 1981). More interesting is the finding of an interaction effect between US birthplace and being a woman, which increases considerably the risk of these women engaging in binge drinking compared with women born abroad. A recent study by Strunin, Edwards, Godette, and Heeren (2007) reported that foreign-born Mexican American females were less likely to be drinkers and less likely to drink heavily than US-born females. Grant et al. (2004b) reported that US-born Mexican Americans were significantly more likely than those who were foreign-born to have lifetime diagnosis of alcohol abuse/dependence, major depression, and other psychiatric disorders. All of these findings support the notion that drinking by US-born women reflects learned behaviors through cultural adaptation to mainstream US culture (Zamboanga, Raffaelli, & Horton, 2006).

According to the NESARC, more Native Americans (16.43 percent) and fewer Blacks (5.52 percent) and Asians (6.03 percent) report an early onset of drinking (i.e., before age 15) than Whites (7.07 percent) and Hispanics (7.93 percent) (NIAAA 2006). The rate of drinking onset before age 15 was lower for female compared with male subjects across all ethnic groups and lowest for Black female subjects at 3.91 percent. Muthen and Muthen (2000) reported strong effects for ethnicity on the development of drinking behaviors from ages 18 to 37 when comparing Blacks, Hispanics, and non-Black and non-Hispanics. Minority ethnic group status was a significant protective factor for heavy drinking until age 32, after which levels of heavy drinking for the three ethnic groups were similar. Department of Justice (Perry 2004) reported that 42 percent of all violent crimes (i.e., rape, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault) were committed by an offender who was under the influence of alcohol.

Prevalence of Past-Month Binge Drinking

Past-year alcohol abuse increased for Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics but not for Asians and Native Americans. Further, rates of past-year alcohol dependence decreased for Whites and Hispanics, whereas rates for Blacks, Native Americans, and Asians remained stable. Recent research findings also based on 1991– 1992 and 2001–2002 data suggest a secular trend of increased risk for alcohol dependence in White and Hispanic women but not Black women (Grucza et al. powerless over alcohol 2008a).

The 2002–2003 National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS) found that adult estimates of lifetime alcohol abuse and dependence were highest among Puerto Ricans (7.1 and 5.5 percent, respectively), followed by Mexican Americans (6.0 and 4.7 percent), “other” Latinos (5.7 and 3.1 percent), and Cuban Americans (3.1 and 2.4 percent) (Alegria et al. 2008). Similarly, as examined by gender, Puerto Rican (15.3 percent) and Mexican-American (15.1 percent) men have higher rates of alcohol dependence than South/Central-American (9.0 percent) and Cuban-American (5.3 percent) men (Caetano et al. 2008a). Among Hispanic women, Puerto Ricans (6.4 percent) had higher rates relative to Mexican (2.1 percent), Cuban (1.6 percent), and South/Central Americans (0.8 percent). Estimates of current and heavy drinking for adults by gender within each ethnic group are provided by the 2001–2002 NESARC (see Table 1) (NIAAA 2006). These data show that current drinking is most prevalent among White and Hispanic men and lowest for Asian-American women. Heavy drinking is defined by both weekly and daily drinking limits (i.e., consuming 5 or more standard drinks per day or 15 or more per week for men and 4 or more drinks per day or 8 or more per week for women) (NIAAA 2006).

Focus On: Ethnicity and the Social and Health Harms From Drinking

Also reviewed were reference lists of included papers and relevant review articles to identify additional cited references that met inclusion criteria. A limitation of the search strategy is that, although approximately half of cirrhosis and liver disease deaths are related to alcohol,20 not all studies specified whether they included only alcohol-related cirrhosis/liver disease or any type of cirrhosis/liver disease. Another limitation is the systematic exclusion of general mortality outcomes and deaths that might be related to alcohol (e.g., homicide) as well as other serious alcohol-related outcomes (e.g., alcohol-involved MVCs or violence) that did not result in mortality. Initially, we have tested for interaction effects of birthplace and gender with alcohol volume and frequency of binge as outcome variables in separate models and found the interaction to be significant.

Miguel Ángel Cano conceptualized the study, conducted statistical analyses, and led writing efforts of the first draft of the manuscript. The remaining authors contributed to the literature review, revising portions of the manuscript, and reviewing the entire manuscript. Find out how many people have alcohol use disorder in the United States across age groups and demographics. Learn how many people ages 12 to 20 engage in underage alcohol misuse in the United States and the impact it has.

Moderation Analyses

In contrast, death rates for White non-Hispanic and Black Hispanic males and females were lower than overall rates for each gender. In addition, there is considerable variation in deaths from liver cirrhosis across Hispanic subgroups, with mortality rates highest in Puerto Ricans and Mexicans and lowest in Cubans (Yoon and Yi 2008). Some changes in the prevalence of alcohol abuse and dependence from 1991–1992 to 2001–2002 have been reported for U.S. ethnic groups (Grant et al. 2004).