Young women ages 18 to 25 in the United States are now binge drinking more than their male peers, a reversal of prior trends, according to a new research letter published Wednesday.
Binge drinking is defined as a man having five or more alcoholic drinks or a woman having four or more alcoholic drinks in one sitting, or within two to three hours. Heavy drinking refers to men having 15 or more drinks per week and women having eight or more drinks per week, according to the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Using data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, researchers found that women ages 18 to 25 reported higher rates of binge drinking than men in the same age group from 2021 to 2023, a reversal of patterns seen in 2017 to 2019.
While men in older age groups still drink more heavily overall, this shift among young adult women is raising alarms in the medical community.
“That has big implications just for health down the line … [including] the progression to alcohol related liver disease,” said Dr. Bryant Shuey, lead author of the study, which was published in JAMA, and a physician at the University of Pittsburgh.
The study only looked at two snapshots in time and didn’t follow the same people over time, so they can’t say whether these results are due to faster declines in drinking among young men or increasing rates among women, but Shuey pointed to several possibilities, including cultural changes around alcohol use, the likelihood of drinking among the young professional workforce and targeted alcohol marketing toward women.
Still, the overall picture is clear: The gender gap in risky alcohol use is narrowing and in the case of young women is flipping.