The impact of changes in alcohol consumption on mortality in Russia
Russia is a country with a high consumption of strong alcohol by the population. At the seminar "The impact of changes in alcohol consumption on mortality in Russia" held on February 18, 2025, participants discussed the number of years of life that the average Russian person loses due to alcohol consumption, as well as the causes of death related to alcohol and the proportion of deaths caused by alcohol consumption.
Elena Zamyatnina, a junior research fellow at the International Laboratory for Population and Health, presented a report on the results of her dissertation research.
Mortality in Russia and its relation to alcohol consumption
She discussed how life expectancy for men and women in Russia has been lower compared to countries with similar levels of socio-economic development since the mid-1960s. Demographers attribute this difference to the northern pattern of alcohol consumption in Russia, which involves frequent consumption of strong alcoholic beverages such as vodka in large quantities. In the early 1990s, researchers found that life expectancy is correlated with alcohol poisoning deaths. Although it accounts for only 1-1.5% of the total mortality rate.
Problem
The main methods used in international literature to assess the impact of alcohol on mortality provide extremely inaccurate estimates. These methods are based on data about the level and frequency of alcohol consumption, which are obtained from sample or epidemiological surveys.
Large-scale epidemiological studies have not been conducted in Russia since the late 2000s to specifically assess the actual structure and volume of alcohol consumption and its relationship to mortality.
This paper attempts to assess the impact of alcohol on the mortality of men and women in Russia without using data from population surveys.
Forensic medical examination data as an indicator of harmful alcohol use
There are different indicators of alcohol consumption levels. For example, official data on alcohol consumption per capita, based on data on sales of alcohol-containing products, data on the volume, frequency and structure of consumption based on estimates from sample surveys of the population, the death rate from alcohol poisoning. In the work, it was proposed to consider the proportion of deaths with ethanol, detected by the results of forensic medical examinations (FME) as an indicator of alcohol abuse in the population. It was revealed that the proportion of deaths with detected ethanol according to the results of the FME has halved over the past 20 years: from more than 45% in the early 2000s to 20% in 2020. But despite this decrease, which undoubtedly indicates a decrease in alcohol consumption among the population, among those who died from external causes of death (for example, from drowning, carbon monoxide poisoning, death from cold or heat stroke, etc.), almost half died while intoxicated. Alcohol consumption still causes a high mortality rate from external causes in Russia.
What causes of death are associated with alcohol consumption?
Apart from the external factors that contribute to death, alcohol has been consistently associated with approximately 30 other causes of death. Thus, a correlation was found for such causes of death as tuberculosis, pneumonia, liver malignancies, fibrosis and non-alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver, road accidents, atherosclerotic heart disease, coronary heart disease, stroke, heart attack, etc.
Interestingly, these are all conditions that cause death that do not occur instantly, and the negative effects of alcohol accumulate over time. This can be explained by a "reservoir" of people who engage in dangerous patterns of alcohol consumption and the "conveyor effect", where even small changes in alcohol consumption for people with existing health issues can significantly increase the risk of death.
However, it is difficult to quantify the "reservoir" of alcohol consumption in Russia due to a lack of data and epidemiological studies on alcohol consumers.
Who is most likely to die from alcohol-related causes in Russia?
Alcohol-related mortality rates vary by gender and age in Russia. Two-thirds of alcohol-related deaths occur among men and women of working age, with mortality rates 3 times higher for men than for women. The highest mortality rates for men are in the 60–64-year age group, and for women they are in the 55–59-year age group, that is, in the first years after retirement.
What proportion of deaths is caused by alcohol consumption?
According to the author's calculations, the proportion of alcohol-related deaths in the working age group (20-59) decreased almost continuously during the 2000s and 2010s. If in the early 2000s it accounted for 43% of the total mortality among men and 30.6% among women, by 2019 the contribution of alcohol consumption to the mortality of the population aged 20-59 years decreased to 21.5% among men and 11% among women.