Baby boomers are reporting the lowest recent alcohol use of any generation in new figures from IWSR, challenging the tidy story that Gen Z is the main engine of sobriety.
IWSR, a market researcher for the global beverage industry, said 71% of boomers consumed alcohol at least once in the past six months. The group, defined as people born from 1946 through 1964, was down 2 percentage points from three years earlier.
Legal-age Gen Z drinkers moved the other way in the same comparison. IWSR said 74% of Gen Z people old enough to drink reported alcohol use in the past six months, up from 66% three years ago.
That puts legal-age Gen Z closer to the overall adult drinking rate of 76%, according to IWSR. Boomers sit below both figures.
What the survey comparison says
- Baby boomers: 71% drank alcohol in the past six months, down 2 percentage points from three years ago.
- Legal-age Gen Z: 74% drank alcohol in the past six months, up from 66% three years ago.
- Total adult population: 76% reported drinking, according to IWSR.
The data cuts against a common shorthand in alcohol coverage: young adults are often cast as the abstinence generation, while older adults are treated as more settled drinkers. IWSR’s figures show a narrower and less convenient picture. Among the generations cited, boomers have the lowest recent drinking rate, while legal-age Gen Z has been catching up with the adult average.
The numbers also require a little discipline. IWSR’s figures measure whether people drank at all in the past six months. They do not, from the figures cited, show how much people drank, how often they drank, or why any group changed its behavior.
So the confirmed finding is specific: moderation appears across age groups, but by this measure boomers are cutting back more than Gen Z. For beverage companies, that is an awkward demographic twist. For everyone else, it is a useful reminder that generational labels tend to make cleaner stories than the data can support.
This story draws on original reporting from Ars Technica.
