Drinking and acquisition of unrecorded alcohol across educational groups in Sweden

Abstract

Introduction: It is estimated that 18.5% of total alcohol consumption in Sweden in 2018 was unrecorded. However, little is known about the socio-economic profile of consumers of unrecorded alcohol. The aim of this study was to elucidate this issue by analysing data from a unique Swedish national repeated cross-sectional alcohol use survey. Methods: Individual-level information on alcohol consumption and socio-economic status (SES) for the years 2013–2018 was retrieved from the Monitoring Project; a nationally representative monthly alcohol use survey. The analytical sample comprised 64 375 respondents aged 25–74 years. SES was measured by educational level. We used three educational groups: (i) low (<10 years); (ii) intermediate (10–12 years); and (iii) high (13+ years). We included indicators of the following sources of unrecorded alcohol consumption: travellers' import, smuggled alcohol, home production, internet and illicit home-distilling. We estimated adjusted SES-specific means of the various forms of unrecorded consumption. The means were adjusted for the effects of age, sex and region. Results: There were no significant educational differences in the total of unrecorded alcohol consumption; the same holds true for home-production and internet. However, with respect to smuggled and home-distilling, a statistically significant educational gradient was observed with the lowest educational group scoring approximately four times higher than the highest. Discussion and Conclusions: Our findings suggest that there are no differences across educational groups in the consumption of unrecorded alcohol as a whole. However, consumption of smuggled alcohol and illicitly distilled spirits is elevated in the low educational group.