Lifetime alcohol abstainers — where in the world are they?

In my last post, I wrote about a medical experiment regarding the effects of alcohol consumption on longevity (Wine and health — why is there so much argument, pro and con?), with lifetime abstainers not faring so well. By coincidence, a few weeks ago the American Association of Wine Economists’ Facebook page, highlighted the available data for Lifetime Alcohol Abstainers. For each of 189 countries in 2010, it listed the percentage of adults (15+ years) who reported having refrained from drinking alcohol throughout their life. The data source was the World Health Organization Global Health Observatory, via the Our World in Data web page.

Here, I thought that it might be worth looking at the geography of these data — these people are not always where you might expect. Obviously, the first thing to do is actually map the percentage data, as shown here.

As we might expect, the abstainers are not randomly distributed on our planet — they are concentrated in Africa and Asia. In particular, Muslim-dominated countries have reported abstention levels greater than 85% — it cannot be 100%, because not everyone in these countries is a practicing Muslim. Also, South America has a higher percentage of abstainers than do North America, Europe or Australasia.

North America and Australasia are dominated by English-speaking peoples, frequently referred to as part of the New World. Here, alcohol abstention is not popular among the people:

United States Canada New Zealand Australia

12.0% 11.1% 11.1% 10.0%

Aside from these two regions, only one other major population center outside Europe has such low levels:

Japan

12.0%

Here, of course, sake is a traditional (and popular) rice-based alcoholic beverage.

Within South America, which is the non-English-speaking part of the New World, only two countries have relatively low levels of abstention:

Paraguay Chile

17.9% 16.1%

Most of the other countries in South and Central America have 20-35% of their people reporting abstention. Note that these are much higher abstention rates than in either Spain or Portugal, where much of the modern culture originated.

This brings us to Europe. For those of you not familiar with its local geography, here is a map showing the location of the relevant countries. Note that Russia west of the Ural Mountains has traditionally been treated as part of Europe, while Siberia is treated as part of Asia. Also, Turkey west of the Black Sea is traditionally part of Europe, with the rest of the country being part of the Middle East, in Asia (or Asia Minor, as it once was called).

Within Europe, there is quite a large range of abstention levels, as illustrated in this graph, which shows three main clusters of levels plus three much-higher outliers (each vertical line represents one country).

The three outlying countries are:

Slovenia Georgia Azerbaijan

55.6% 51.3% 38.7%

The latter two countries are geographical outliers within Europe, to the south-east, along with Armenia (at 23.0% abstention). This is ironic, since this area, between the Caspian and Black Seas, is now considered to be where the technique of making wine from grapes originated.

This leaves only the Slovenians with some explaining to do, as their abstention level is more than three times that of any of the other former members of Yugoslavia, as well as higher than the levels of their other neighboring countries (Austria, Hungary, Italy).

The three main clusters European abstention (0-10%, 10-20%, 20-30%) do not show any obvious geographical patterns. For example, within the Nordic countries, Denmark (4.5%) and Norway (5.5%) are in the bottom group, while Sweden (12.1%), Finland (14.0%) and Iceland (14.1%) are in the second group. Within Iberia, Spain has only 12.6% abstainers, while Portugal is much higher, at 22.5%.

Nor do socio-economic criteria seem to offer much explanation. For example, the levels in the major wine-making countries vary from France (2.0%) to Italy (25.7%). Indeed, these two countries are also the extremes of those European countries with Romance languages — on the other hand, the Romance-language countries of Central and South America vary from 17.9% (Paraguay) to 36.1% (Guatemala) abstainers. The German-language countries of Europe vary from 3.8% (The Netherlands) to 18.1% (Austria); and the Slavic-language countries vary from 2.6% (Czechia) to 27.3% (Poland).

The only thing I have found that correlates even partly with the variation in rate of abstainers in Europe is from the responses to the Gallup Poll question: “Is religion important in your daily life?” (see Wikipedia). Across all of the countries of Europe, there is a positive log-linear relationship between abstention and religion of r² = 23%, as shown in the next graph (where each point represents one country).

Conclusion

Lifetime abstainers from alcohol are not randomly distributed across our planet. They are principally concentrated in the Muslim-dominated countries of Africa and Asia, along with higher percentages in South / Central America compared to North America, Australasia, and Europe. However, even among the countries of Europe there is a surprising diversity of abstention rates, although this does not appear to have much relation to any socio-economic factors.