Annual Database of National Beverage Consumption Volumes and Expenditures, 1950 to 2015

Full description

Since the 1950s, the consumption of alcoholic beverages has changed
very considerably around the world. In high-income countries, consumers
tended to drink mostly what could be best produced domestically (spirits
in the cold north, wine in temperate climates, and beer in countries
too cold for winegrapes yet warm enough to grow malting barley). With
increasing globalization and interactions between cultures, however,
countries are converging in their beverage consumption patterns. In
emerging economies, meanwhile, much of their alcohol was produced at
home and not recorded, but that too is changing with their urbanization
and income growth.

This new database covers all countries of the world, introduces two
new summary indicators to capture the extent of convergence in national
alcohol consumption levels and in their mix of beverages, and
distinguishes countries according to whether their alcoholic focus was
on wine, beer or spirits in the early 1960s as well as their geographic
region and their real per capita income. For recent decades expenditure
data are included and we compare alcohol with soft drink retail
expenditure, and show what difference it makes when WHO estimates of
unrecorded alcohol volumes are included as part of total alcohol
consumption.

A report summarizing the data is available as Wine Economics Research Centre Working Paper 0117.

The data are in three Excel files that are freely downloadable
below. Please acknowledge the source as: Holmes, A.J. and K. Anderson,
Annual Database of National Beverage Consumption Volumes and
Expenditures, 1950 to 2015. Wine Economics Research Centre, University
of Adelaide