A DECADE OF DRINKING



A DECADE OF DRINKING: TEN-YEAR TRENDS IN DRINKING PATTERNS IN AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND, 1990-1999
Sally Casswell and Krishna Bhatta
Alcohol & Public Health Research Unit, May 2001

APPENDIX A: SURVEY DATA IN CONTEXT

Data on alcohol available for consumption (referred to here as 'available alcohol') is supplied by Statistics New Zealand and is based on data supplied by the alcohol industry for excise tax purposes. It takes into account local production plus imports minus exports but does not include home produced alcohol. (However, these and other survey data indicate this contributes relatively little in New Zealand).

Direct comparisons between available alcohol and the survey data are not possible. Firstly, these survey data are from Auckland while the available alcohol data relates to all New Zealand. Secondly the survey data are based on 14-65 year olds and the available alcohol estimate of per capita consumption is based on all persons aged 15 and over.

National aggregate level data from Statistics New Zealand on alcohol produced and imported show a decrease between 1990 and 1999. The alcohol consumption in Auckland as shown by the Auckland surveys did not decrease (Fig A1).

The difference between the two has occurred largely after 1995 when the Auckland population began to include higher proportions of well educated and higher income people. The higher frequency of drinking by this group affected the frequency of drinking in the total sample and contributed to the difference in total volume consumed by Aucklanders compared with the national average for available alcohol.

Consumer confidence, as measured by the Westpac McDermott Survey of Consumer Confidence, has shown higher levels in Auckland than in New Zealand as a whole. Frequency of drinking is highly positively correlated with consumer confidence (0.82) and this is another possible reason for the difference seen between Auckland and the rest of the country. Similarly, unemployment as measured by the Statistics New Zealand Household Labour Force Survey has differed for Auckland, particularly in the periods of unemployment decline, when Auckland’s rate has generally been half a percentage point lower than the national rate. Once again this may have contributed to higher aggregate levels of consumption in Auckland.