Young Americans Are Drinking Less—But Can It Last?

Americans have always had a close relationship with alcohol. Every hour was seemingly happy hour as colonists quaffed wine at breakfast, beer at lunch and toddies at dinner, according to the authors of the 1981 tome Alcohol and Public Policy: Beyond the Shadow of Prohibition. Although Americans now drink less than a third by volume per capita than their counterparts did at the blotto peak of the early 19th century, the share of citizens who consider themselves drinkers has remained pretty steady for decades. Gallup has been keeping track of how many Americans report being drinkers since 1939—only a few years after the end of Prohibition—and the number almost always falls somewhere between 60% and 70%. In 2023 it was 62%.

But even though the percentage of Americans who drink has stayed steady, drinker demographics have changed a lot in the past few years. Male drinkers traditionally consume more than women, but women—especially those in their 20s and 30s—have been catching up since the 2000s. That’s thanks in large part to the normalization of the “wine mom,” whose drinking is marketed as a cheeky sort of rebellion against her familial and professional duties. (Experts are more likely to call it “drinking to cope,” which sounds a lot more grim.)