Heavy Drinking Creates an Economic Hangover

The cost of excessive alcohol consumption in the United States in 2006 reached $223.5 billion or about $1.90 per drink, according to a new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Almost three–quarters of these costs were due to binge drinking, consuming four or more alcoholic beverages per occasion for women or five or more drinks per occasion for men, the report said.

“This research captures the reality that binge drinking means binge spending and, left unchecked, the burdensome cost of excessive drinking will only go up,” said CDC Director Thomas R. Frieden, M.D., M.P.H.  “Unfortunately the hangover is being passed on to all of us in the workplace and the health and criminal justice systems.  The cure is responsible individual behavior combined with the successful policies we used to decrease smoking in the United States.” 

Excessive alcohol consumption, or heavy drinking, is defined as consuming an average of more than one  alcoholic beverage per day for women, and an average of more than two alcoholic beverages per day for men, and any drinking by pregnant women or underage youth. 

Researchers found the costs largely resulted from losses in workplace productivity (72 percent of the total cost), health care expenses for problems caused by excessive drinking (11 percent of the total cost), law enforcement and other criminal justice expenses related to excessive alcohol consumption (9 percent of the total cost), and motor vehicle crash costs from impaired driving (6 percent of the total cost). 

Other costs

The study did not consider a number of other costs such as those due to pain and suffering by the excessive drinker or others who were affected by the drinking, and thus may be an underestimate. Researchers estimated that excessive drinking cost $746 per person in the United States in 2006.

Overall, researchers found that about $94.2 billion (42 percent) of the total economic costs of excessive alcohol consumption were borne by federal, state, and local governments while $92.9 billion (41.5 percent) was borne by excessive drinkers and their family members. Government agencies paid most of the health care expenses due to excessive alcohol use (61 percent), while drinkers and their families bore most of the cost of lost productivity (55 percent), primarily in the form of lower household income. 

Excessive alcohol consumption, including high per–occasion alcohol consumption (binge drinking), and high average daily alcohol consumption is responsible for an average of 79,000 deaths in the United States each year. 

“It is striking that over three–quarters of the cost of excessive alcohol consumption is due to binge drinking, which is reported by about 15 percent of U.S. adults,” said Robert Brewer, M.D., M.P.H., Alcohol Program Leader at CDC and one of the authors of the report. “Fortunately, there are a number of effective public health strategies that communities can use to reduce binge drinking and related harms, such as increasing the price of alcohol and reducing the number of places that sell and serve it.”