Younger Americans Are Drinking Less — But Adults 50 to 64 Are Drinking More, and Heavier

Here's the strange thing about America's relationship with alcohol right now: the national drinking rate has fallen to 54%, the lowest Gallup has recorded in nearly 90 years of tracking, yet one large slice of the population is moving in the opposite direction. According to a Keck Medicine of USC analysis of national survey data, heavy drinking among adults aged 50 to 64 has risen by more than a third since 2018. The headline decline is real, but it is not the whole story — and if you've been reading only the top-line numbers, you've been missing the split.

The Shifting Landscape of U.S. Alcohol Consumption

Gallup has asked Americans about their drinking since 1939, and the recent movement is genuinely historic. From 1997 through 2023, at least 60% of U.S. adults reported consuming alcohol in any given year. Then the figure slipped to 62% in 2023, dropped to 58% in 2024, and landed at 54% in the July 2025 survey — one point below the previous low, a one-time reading of 55% recorded back in 1958. The all-time highs, 68% to 71%, all came between 1974 and 1981.

What makes this moment distinctive is that it isn't just fewer people drinking. Gallup also found that those who do drink report drinking less, and less often. So the decline shows up on two dimensions at once: participation and intensity. And it coincides with a first-of-its-kind shift in how Americans think about alcohol's health effects — for the first time, a majority, 53%, now believe moderate drinking is bad for one's health.

Younger Adults Drive Overall Decline Amidst Health Concerns

The engine of this decline is the youngest adult cohort. Gallup's data shows young adults were already less likely to drink a decade ago, but the trend has accelerated: their drinking rate fell from 59% in 2023 to 50% in 2025, putting them below middle-aged and older adults for the first time in this tracking. TIME's reporting on the same national data sharpens the picture: total drinking fell nearly 6% among Gen Z between 2022 and 2024, compared with about 2% for Millennials, and heavy drinking fell by roughly a fifth in both generations.

Why? The evidence points to health consciousness, not economics or fashion. Gallup explicitly ties the falling drinking rate to the rising majority view that moderate drinking harms health — a belief that has grown steadily since Gallup began tracking it in 2001. Younger adults appear to have absorbed that message most completely. As TIME's Jeffrey Kluger put it, older adults "grew up in an era where everyone was drinking heavily around them and it was acceptable, whereas that's no longer the case among Gen Z or Millennials."

There's a longer arc here, too. Gallup's generational analysis notes that baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, have consistently been more likely to drink than the Silent Generation born before them — meaning today's 50-to-64-year-olds are carrying a generational drinking habit into an age when the health stakes are highest.

A Counter-Trend: Rising Heavy Drinking Among Older Adults

While the young retreat, the middle-aged have not. The Keck Medicine study, which analyzed National Health Interview Survey data, found that adults aged 50 to 64 continued drinking at rates higher than before the pandemic even as younger adults cut back. TIME's figures quantify it: a 4% increase in overall drinking in the 50-to-64 group between 2022 and 2024, alongside a 36% spike in heavy drinking from 2018 to 2024.

"It's encouraging to see alcohol use decline for the first time since the start of the pandemic," said Brian P. Lee, a hepatologist and liver transplant specialist at Keck Medicine and the study's principal investigator. "However, use remains above pre-pandemic levels and certain groups continue to have concerning trends."

Those risks are not abstract. Per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, excessive alcohol consumption is one of the leading preventable causes of illness and death in the United States. Lee notes that alcohol accounts for roughly half of all liver-related deaths, and that alcohol-associated cirrhosis has become the leading cause of liver transplants. The reasons for the 50-to-64 uptick remain, as TIME reported, unclear — and I won't pretend otherwise.

Understanding Alcohol Use Metrics: Beyond the Headlines

Part of why this story can feel confusing is that "drinking" gets measured three different ways, and they don't move in lockstep. Gallup's 54% figure is the broadest: it simply counts the share of adults who say they consume alcohol at all. Heavy drinking is a different, narrower measure — the Keck analysis tracks it against CDC definitions of excessive consumption, which is why a group can show stable overall drinking while its heavy-drinking rate climbs sharply. And Alcohol Use Disorder, tracked in federal surveys like the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, is a clinical diagnosis — a distinct category from either casual consumption or heavy drinking.

Keep those distinctions in mind and the apparent contradictions between reports dissolve. A national drinking rate can hit a record low while heavy drinking rises in a specific age band, because they are measuring different behaviors in different populations. The decline and the counter-trend are both true at once.

Divergent Paths: Alcohol Consumption Trends by Age

Set the two cohorts side by side and the divergence hidden inside the national average becomes unmistakable. The table below juxtaposes Gallup's overall drinking rates with the Keck Medicine study's heavy-drinking findings, comparing younger adults against those aged 50 to 64.

Read the two rows together and the synthesis is plain: the national decline is being generated almost entirely by the young, while the 50-to-64 cohort is not merely holding steady but drinking more heavily than it did six years ago — at precisely the ages when cirrhosis and alcohol-related cancers become most dangerous.

Navigating Nuance: What These Trends Mean for Public Health

The practical decision this evidence supports is straightforward: public health initiatives and individual awareness campaigns should differentiate between age groups, recognizing the overall decline driven by younger adults' health concerns while simultaneously addressing the rising heavy drinking among adults aged 50 to 64. A single national message — "Americans are drinking less" — risks leaving the highest-risk group unaddressed.

The measurable indicator to watch is future survey data showing a stabilization or decline in heavy drinking rates among the 50-to-64 age group, alongside continued reduction in overall consumption among younger adults. Gallup's annual Consumption Habits survey and the federal health interview data that fed the Keck analysis will tell us whether the generational split widens or begins to close — and whether the health message that reshaped young adults' habits eventually reaches their parents.

Sources

• U.S. Drinking Rate at New Low as Alcohol Concerns Surge — Gallup.com
• U.S. alcohol use falls for first time since the COVID-19 pandemic, but remains above pre-pandemic levels
• Young Adults in U.S. Drinking Less Than in Prior Decades — Gallup.com
• Why Older Americans Are Drinking More Alcohol—Not Less — TIME