Alcohol use by youth in the Czech Republic and Finland: An empirical test of skog’s theory of the distribution of alcohol consumption

This article focuses on alcohol consumption among Czech and Finnish youth. First, it describes the situation regarding alcohol consumption in both countries, including trends in consumption in recent years, and, second, it presents and tests the theory of the distribution of alcohol consumption by a Norwegian sociologist Ole-Jørgen Skog, which has had an influence on many alcohol policies. Skog’s theory describes the relationship between mean alcohol consumption in a population and the consumption at all levels of consumption (from light to heavy drinkers) and suggests that they are strongly interconnected and are of log-linear nature. Data used in this study come from two large-scale international surveys the “European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs” and the “International Self-Report Delinquency” study and cover the period from 2003 to 2013. Results show that alcohol consumption among Finnish juveniles is considerably lower compared to their Czech peers and, moreover, it seems to gradually decrease in the given time period, again, unlike Czech youth. Results concerning the test of Skog’s theory are largely consistent with his propositions. The only difference is revealed, specifically it is the group of heavy drinkers – not light drinkers as in Skog’s study – which is most affected by changes in mean alcohol consumption in the population.