For many, the ability to buy a legal drink is a sign of maturity and freedom — and perhaps a harbinger of questionable choices and good times. Perhaps surprisingly, a 2018 report by the World Health Organization concluded that 57% of the world`s adult population (or 3.113 billion people aged 15 or older) had not consumed alcoholic beverages in 2016. In fact, 44% of adults worldwide had never consumed alcoholic beverages. On the other hand, the youngest age of alcohol consumption on our list belongs to Germany. If a 14-year-old is accompanied by a parent or guardian, it is legal in Germany to consume or buy beer, wine and cider. Without a parent or guardian, you must be at least 16 years old to consume or purchase alcohol. However, when it comes to a high percentage, you must be 18 years of age or older to serve, sell or deliver. Violations of these rules are punishable by a fine of up to €50,000 or more than €60,000. The following map shows the exceptions to the minimum age of 21 for alcohol consumption. Amethyst Initiative. The Amethyst Initiative is a program of college and university presidents.
It promotes discussion about the legal drinking age at the age of 21. What explains this sharp increase in alcohol abuse at the age of 16? We have two mechanisms in mind: access and risk perception. To assess the importance of access, we first use new data from a mystery shopping study in Upper Austria, where underage mystery shoppers visit retail stores and try to buy alcohol. Out of 4,269 purchase attempts, about 23% were successful. As a result, only three-quarters of retailers comply with the MLDA regulations, which may indicate an enforcement issue. When we aggregate these trials at the municipal level and merge socio-economic data, we find that socio-economic composition is not correlated with retailer compliance. This is consistent with the observation that there is no difference in binge drinking between children from different socioeconomic backgrounds before the age of 16. Also in the ESPAD survey, 84% of 15-year-olds perceive access to alcohol as “easy” or “fairly easy”. Taken together, these results suggest that lack of access to alcohol can hardly explain the effectiveness of MLDA legislation.
Among 15-year-old boys, more than 1 in 5 reported drinking weekly in 24 European countries and regions, with the highest prevalence observed in Malta, Denmark, England and Wales. But in 2014, only nine countries and regions had a prevalence of more than 20%, with the highest prevalence in Croatia, Malta and Italy, according to the report. In Central America, the Caribbean and South America, the legal drinking age and the legal purchasing age range from 0 to 20 years (see table below). In South America in particular, the legal age of purchase is 18, with two exceptions: countries where no young people aged 15 to 19 reported high episodic alcohol consumption in the past 30 days were Mauritania, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. Manzoor Butt: “The consumption of illegal toxic alcohol kills hundreds of people every year in Pakistan; Primary care physicians must take a more proactive role in saving precious lives,” Middle East Journal of Business, April 2015 A plausible complementary mechanism is that MLDA legislation has established normative value, in that some adolescents simply feel compelled to obey and abstain from alcohol before the age of 16. even if it is available. In addition, parents may become more lenient when their child reaches the age of 16 and alcohol consumption is not only legally allowed, but also socially accepted. This normative mechanism is difficult to verify empirically.
However, the ESPAD survey includes a question about the perception of alcohol risk that we can use as a surrogate outcome. Without MLDA legislation, we expect risk perception to be an ongoing function of age, but that`s not what we see in the data. In fact, the perceived risk of heavy weekend drinking decreases significantly at the MLDA threshold (Figure 5). We interpret this as suggestive evidence of a normative effect of the legislation. The minimum age to buy alcohol in India is 18 years old in Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Sikkim and Pondicherry. The legal drinking age is 21 in Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Mizoram, Orissa, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Tripura, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Haryana, Meghalaya, Punjab and Delhi. Alcohol is banned in Bihar, Gujarat, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Lakshadweep. On the other hand, “some countries have a total ban on alcohol, so it`s not legal to sell to anyone,” said Dag Rekve, a researcher at WHO`s Division of Mental Health and Substance Abuse in Geneva, Switzerland. Research suggests that the greater a country`s economic prosperity, the more alcohol is consumed and the higher the prevalence of episodic binge-drinking. Excessive alcohol consumption among teenagers is more common in Europe than in the United States, where alcohol is prohibited for people under the age of 21.
This column examines the relationship between the legal drinking age and alcohol abuse. Based on administrative health data and surveys conducted in Austria, she finds a significant increase in alcohol consumption – especially among boys and people from disadvantaged backgrounds – when alcohol consumption becomes legal. Raising the legal drinking age in Europe could reduce alcohol intoxication and the early socio-economic gradient of binge drinking among adolescents. In many countries, the age at which one can legally drink is considered an important stage of life. This age has also been discussed for a long time. Should the minimum drinking age coincide with a country`s voting age, the age of conscription, the age at which you can buy a lottery ticket or rent a car? Or should it be an age in itself? The drinking age in the United States is 21, although this is not the case in all other countries or even in some states in the United States. Some countries even prefer not to impose such restrictions. The drinking age in Ireland, for example, does not exist in a private home. In the United States, rates of binge drinking among teens are also declining. There is a wealth of literature on the effects of MLA on various outcomes, such as alcohol and drug use (e.g., Carpenter Dobkin Warman 2016, Crost, & Rees 2013), mortality (e.g., Carpenter & Dobkin, 2009), crime (e.g., Carpenter & Dobkin, 2015), impaired driving (e.g., Miron & Tetelbaum, 2007) and education (e.g., Lindo et al., 2013).
Most of these studies are based on U.S. or Canadian data with elevated MLDA. We complement this literature by studying excessive alcohol consumption among adolescents in Austria, which has an MLDA of 16 years (Ahammer et al. 2021). Austria is particularly interesting because it is one of the countries with the highest alcohol consumption in the world (see Figure 1). In addition, we can rely on an excellent data pool in Austria. We use both high-quality survey data and administrative health registries, allowing us to take a closer look at the socioeconomic gradient of binge drinking and the mechanisms underlying MLDA legislation. But even after the law went into effect, only a few states explicitly prohibited minors from drinking alcohol in private. As of January 2010, 15 states prohibited alcohol consumption in public or private places and 17 states did not prohibit private use by minors. There are 18 states that allow underage drinkers to consume alcohol with their families or in certain places.
Religious exceptions to the rule apply to all states. The legal drinking age around the world varies widely. Most of these laws apply only to the consumption of alcoholic beverages in public. The only countries with a legal drinking age at home are England and Wales. They forbid drinking before the age of six.