Highly Intelligent People Drink More Alcohol, Study Finds

by
Kelsey Clark

As if you needed another reason to indulge in a Saturday morning mimosa, a 2010 study published in the journal Social Science and Medicine found a link between educational achievement and higher alcohol consumption among British men and women.

While the researchers were specifically looking for instances of problem drinking, the findings indicate a correlation between intelligence and drinking in general. The team analyzed data from the British Cohort Study, a longitudinal study analyzing a week’s worth of people born in Britain in the year 1970 (nearly 10,000 people). They then looked specifically at the year 2004, when the participants had reached age 34, and analyzed their educational achievements and test scores as compared to their drinking habits. It was here they found a correlation between educational attainment and alcohol consumption, especially for women.

When reviewing their findings, the researchers did put some of the onus on the socioeconomic factors that come with higher education more broadly. They write that highly educated people have “a more intensive social life that encourages alcohol intake, a greater engagement into traditionally male spheres of life, greater social acceptability of alcohol use and abuse, more exposure to alcohol use during formative years, and greater postponement of childbearing and its responsibilities.”

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