Across 175 countries, Alcohol consumption and Gender Development Index rise and fall together at r = +0.51 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). Comparing only countries with similar income (GDP per person) shrinks it to +0.29, which could easily be chance (q = 0.11, allowing for the many pairs tested, and allowing for countries in the same region being alike). So the first figure mostly shows richer countries differing from poorer ones, not a link between these two things.
Comparing countries across the middle half of gender development index, 0.931 to 0.994 ratio of women's HDI to men's, alcohol consumption is 2.1 litres per adult per year higher at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 1.34 litres per adult per year.
Link before adjusting (r)+0.507p = 8.4e-13 · 175 countries
After adjusting for national income+0.287p = 0.000 · likely range [+0.14, +0.42]
p, allowing for regions0.072standard error 0.131 · 7 regions
Check for luck (q)0.107across 12,497 pairs
How to read these.r runs from −1 (one goes up as the other goes down) to +1 (they rise together), and 0 means no link. Adjusting for national income means comparing countries with the same GDP per person, so differences in wealth can’t explain the link. Income is used in percentage terms, since an extra $1,000 means more to a poor country than to a rich one. p is how likely a link this strong would be if there were really none. Below 0.05 means it is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 1.1e-32 means a decimal point followed by 31 zeros and then 11, so very close to zero. The likely range is where the true figure probably lies, and a range that crosses zero means the link could easily be chance. Countries in the same region tend to resemble each other, so the third figure allows for that, which gives a fairer p. The standard error is the typical size of the error in r. Finally, testing this many pairs means some will look strong by luck alone. A q below 0.05 means this link is unlikely to be one of those.
Alcohol consumption · litres per adult per yearlink with income +0.51 · moderate
Gender Development Index · ratio of women's HDI to men'slink with income +0.65 · high
“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.
Every country as a dot
best-fit line line after adjusting
Four ways to measure the link
Method
r
p
Countries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted
+0.507
8.4e-13
175
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted
+0.568
2.6e-16
175
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income
+0.287
0.000
175
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income
+0.369
5.5e-7
175
The rank version uses only each country’s place in line, from lowest to highest, so a few extreme countries count for less. The adjusted and unadjusted versions use the same 175 countries: those that report both measures and GDP per person. So the gap between them comes from the adjustment, not from a change in which countries are counted. Drop in the size of r after adjusting: +0.220 (a minus sign means it grew).
How solid is it?
Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from +0.271 (without IRQ) to +0.300 (without MLI). The bar above shows that range on a scale from −1 to +1, with the solid line at the full result. The single country that moves r most: IRQ (-0.015).
Within each region
Countries are not separate, unrelated cases, and neighbors share a lot. A link that holds inside each region is far more believable than one that shows up only when comparing regions.
n
r
East Asia & Pacific
27
-0.04
Europe & Central Asia
47
+0.59
Latin America & Caribbean
28
+0.29
Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan & Pakistan
21
+0.06
Sub-Saharan Africa
44
+0.20
By income third
If the link shows up only in the richest third of countries, it is a feature of rich countries, not a general pattern.
n
r
Poorest third
59
+0.15
Middle third
58
+0.58
Richest third
58
+0.28
By largest religious group
Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.
n
r
Christians
105
+0.05
Muslims
47
+0.26
By last european coloniser
Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.
n
r
France
24
+0.20
Never a European colony
20
+0.51
Spain
19
+0.39
United Kingdom
60
+0.34
Without outliers (countries far outside the middle half of countries on either measure, by more than one and a half times the width of that middle half): r = +0.277 after dropping 10 countries.
Two series, one country
Both measures over the years for one country you pick. The two charts are stacked so they share only the years along the bottom.
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Over time, within countries
Everything above compares countries with each other at one moment. This section compares each country only with itself over 21years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.
Within countries over time, there is no link that is clearly more than chance (r = +0.122, comparing each country only with itself over the years, and each year only with the same year elsewhere). Whatever the cross-country picture shows, countries whose alcohol consumption moved did not tend to see their gender development index move with it.
Across countries (adjusted)+0.287for comparison
Within countries+0.062each country vs itself
…and vs the same year elsewhere+0.122q = 0.098 · 170 countries
Year-on-year changes+0.020q = 0.481
Read with care.
Almost all of this indicator's variation is between countries, not within them, so the within-country estimate rests on a small part of the data.
3,308 country-years (one country in one year), 170 countries, 2000–2020, about 20 years each on average. Share of the variation that happens within countries over time: 7% for Alcohol consumption, 4% for Gender Development Index. The margins of error allow for each country appearing many times, and for each year’s value being close to the year before.
Year-to-year changes are a cautious test, not a final answer. Looking only at changes from one year to the next removes each country’s own trends. But it also makes measurement mistakes louder, which pulls the results toward zero. A near-zero result here is weak evidence of no link, not proof.
With one measure years behind the other
Same year (lag 0): +0.122. A peak away from zero does not show which comes first. These series change slowly — this year’s value is close to last year’s. That makes the curve smooth and nearly symmetric, whatever produced the data. Even a sharp peak at one lag (a gap of some years) would not prove that one measure changes the other.
The largest value on this curve (+0.20 at lag -7) is higher than the same-year one by 0.08. That gap is not a finding. It is the largest of 21 closely related estimates, and picking the biggest of many tests always makes it look bigger. That is exactly why nothing on this site is ranked or chosen by lag.
The data
litres per adult per year
ratio of women's HDI to men's
Years
Romania ROU
16.8
0.986
2020, 2023
Georgia GEO
14.4
1.01
2020, 2023
Latvia LVA
12.9
1.03
2020, 2023
Lithuania LTU
12.1
1.02
2020, 2023
Czechia CZE
12
0.987
2020, 2023
Germany DEU
11.8
0.975
2020, 2023
Poland POL
11.7
1.01
2020, 2023
Belarus BLR
11.6
1.01
2020, 2023
Bulgaria BGR
11.6
1
2020, 2023
Austria AUT
11.5
0.985
2020, 2023
Uganda UGA
11.3
0.908
2020, 2023
Burkina Faso BFA
11.3
0.881
2020, 2023
Moldova MDA
11.1
1.03
2020, 2023
Tanzania TZA
10.9
0.951
2020, 2023
Luxembourg LUX
10.8
0.996
2020, 2023
World Bank, World Development Indicators United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2025
Total alcohol consumption per capita (litres of pure alcohol, age 15+)
World Health Organization Global Health Observatory · CC BY 4.0 · updated quarterly
Recorded drinking plus an estimate of unrecorded drinking, per person aged fifteen and over. Ends in 2020.
No "better" direction is set, and the reason is the strongest fact about this measure on the site. Of everything here, it is what most separates countries by their largest religion. Alcohol is forbidden in Islam, so a low figure in a Muslim-majority country is religious practice showing up in a health statistic. Calling that end "best" would make this site score religious practice, which it refuses to do everywhere else. Every measure of attendance, prayer, marriage and belief here has no "better" direction for exactly that reason. This is the same fact arriving through a different column.
The World Health Organization is right that alcohol carries a real burden of disease, and the site does not dispute it. It declines to turn that into a score for a country, when the thing being scored would largely be how many of its people are Muslim.
United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report Office · via Our World in Data · CC BY 3.0 IGO · updated annual
The HDI worked out for women divided by the HDI worked out for men. It is above 1 where women score higher, as they do in several countries on health. So no "better" direction is set: equality is the aim, and equality is the middle of the scale, not one end of it.
How this was computed
Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2019–2023. To adjust for income, each measure is first predicted from GDP per person (in percentage terms, on a log scale) with a straight-line fit. Only what is left over is then compared. This is called a partial correlation. The line is drawn the standard way (ordinary least squares), which picks the line that comes closest to all the countries at once. The error margins allow for countries in the same region resembling each other, using 7 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 12,497 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated DYB 2024. How the country data works · explore Alcohol consumption and Gender Development Index
This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Alcohol consumption changes Gender Development Index, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.
More links with Alcohol consumption or Gender Development Index