Alcohol mortality in Russia: assessment with representative survey data

Abstract

According to vast empirical evidence, excessive alcohol consumption is an important factor of premature mortality in Russia. At the same time, quantifying alcohol-related deaths is not so easy, as generally the discussion of alcohol mortality only concerns the causes of death attributed solely to alcohol, which significantly narrows the range of possible negative consequences. Including data on losses from myocardial infarction, coronary heart disease and other common cardiovascular and other diseases in alcohol mortality estimates is enabled by an approach using data on the relative risks of death from various causes depending on the type of alcohol consumption. Within this study, alcohol consumption, depending on sex and age, was assessed on data from a representative national survey, taking into account information on the volume of recorded sales of alcoholic beverages. According to the obtained results, in 2018 the death rate from alcohol-related causes in Russia amounted to 196,000 people, 146,000 men and 50,000 women among them. The peak of alcohol mortality is observed among people aged over 50. The structure of alcohol mortality is dominated by diseases of the cardiovascular system and external causes, and for men the contribution of external causes is significantly higher. Excessive alcohol consumption reduces life expectancy by 5.9 and 4.7 years for men and women, and healthy life expectancy by 4.2 and 2.6 years for men and women.