Alcohol consumption in India: NFHS-5 Reports on Trends across States and Age Groups

NFHS-5 Report on Alcohol Consumption- Relevance for UPSC Exam

• GS Paper 2: Governance, Administration and Challenges- Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.

NFHS-5 Report on Alcohol Consumption in News

• The National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5), 2019-21 report was recently released. NFHS-5 report on alcohol consumption found interesting insights about alcohol consumption across different states and among different age group.

NFHS-5 Report on Alcohol Consumption

• Across Geographical divide: NFHS-5 found that Alcohol consumption among both men and women is higher in rural India than in urban India.
• Across Gender: Overall, 1% of women aged 15 and over drink alcohol, compared to 19% of men in the same age group.
  • This breaks up into 1.6% (rural) and 0.6% (urban) among women, and 19.9% and 16.5% respectively among men.

Alcohol Consumption Across States- NFHS-5

• Highest Alcohol Consumption: Of all states, Arunachal Pradesh has the highest proportion of both men (53%) and women (24%) who drink alcohol.
  • Among women, Arunachal Pradesh is followed by Sikkim (16%); among men, it is followed by Telangana (43%).
  • Besides Arunachal and Telangana, alcohol consumption among men is higher (40% and above) in upper Brahmaputra region of Assam, districts in Jharkhand and Bastar region of Chhattisgarh.
• Lowest Alcohol Consumption: Lakshadweep 4%, Gujarat 5.8%,, J&K 8.7%, Rajasthan 11.0%, Maharashtra 13.9%, UP 14.5% are the lowest alcohol consuming states/UTs in India.
  • Alcohol Consumption among men is the lowest in Lakshadweep (0.4%).

Alcohol Consumption among Socially Disadvantaged Groups- NFHS-5

• Alcohol consumption is more common among those from the Scheduled Tribes than from any other caste/tribe groups.
• This Alcohol Consumption Trend is true of both women (6% consumption among STs) and men (33%).

Alcohol Consumption among different Religious Groups- NFHS-5

• Among religious groups, the proportion of men who drink alcohol is higher among those belonging to “other religions” (47%) than among those belonging to other religions.
• Among Various Religious Groups: Christian (28%), followed by Buddhist/Neo-Buddhist (24.5%) are the largest drinking religious groups as per the NFHS-5. Percentage of people from each religion who drinks alcohol are listed below-
  • Hindu (20%), Muslim (5%), Christian (28%), Sikh (23.5%), Buddhist/Neo-Buddhist (24.5%) and Jain (5.9%) religions.

Report of NFHS 5: Key points

• The report comprises of detailed information on key domains of population, health and family welfare and associated domains.
• The information includes: characteristics of the population; fertility; family planning; infant and child mortality; maternal and child health; nutrition and anaemia; morbidity and healthcare; women’s empowerment etc.
• The main objective of successive rounds of the NFHS has been to provide reliable and comparable data relating to health and family welfare and other emerging areas in India.

NFHS-5 Report Released

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