China
For centuries the people in China have enjoyed booze at celebrations, but few drank regularly. As incomes have shot up over the past 35 years, alcohol consumption has accelerated, says an article in The Economist. This article published in August this year together with its aptly crafted title ‘The Spirit Level’ and loud imagery showing a group of youth each with a bottle of the local Baijo to his lips, does enough to catch attention.
What the article presents is nothing economists would find alarming, who have for long found a positive correlation between growth in GDP and alcohol consumption. Indeed in case of China it has been sprinting in alcohol consumption as the GDP kept growing over the last decade, with the average annual consumption rising from 2.5 litres of pure alcohol in 1978 to 6.7 litres in 2010.