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Evolving from a rum state: Australia's alcohol consumption
Author(s) -
Anderson Kym
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
australian journal of agricultural and resource economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.683
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1467-8489
pISSN - 1364-985X
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8489.12382
Subject(s) - wine , per capita , consumption (sociology) , reputation , alcohol consumption , state (computer science) , agricultural economics , geography , economy , economics , economic history , political science , development economics , sociology , demography , alcohol , social science , population , art , law , biochemistry , chemistry , algorithm , computer science , visual arts
Europeans settlers in the Australian colonies had a reputation of being heavy drinkers. Rum dominated during the first few decades, followed by beer. It took until the 1970s before Australia's annual per capita consumption of wine exceeded 10 L, and even then, wine represented only one‐fifth of national alcohol consumption. But over the next two decades, per capita wine consumption nearly trebled and beer consumption shrunk – the opposite of what happened to global alcohol consumption shares. This paper draws on newly compiled data sets to (i) reveal that Australia was not much more alcoholic than Britain or southern Europe during the nineteenth century and (ii) help explain why it took so long for a consumer interest in wine to emerge in Australia.