Socio-demographic characteristics, alcohol drinking and self-rated health among Russian women : A cross-sectional study

Abstract: Background: Russia has undergone tremendous socioeconomic transformations. Particularly detrimental was the period of 1990-s that evidenced hazardous trends in public health. Alcohol consumption was suggested to be responsible for the negative health trends in the society. Male alcohol consumption attracted disproportional attention leaving female alcohol consumption, its predictors and influence on women’s health disregarded and uninvestigated. Aim: To describe the practices of female alcohol consumption and socio-demographic predictors of drinking, to explore the impact that drinking might have on the self-rated health of Russian women. Method: Cross-sectional analysis of data drawn from the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey, round 20th. The association tests between the measures of alcohol consumption and covariates were run. Ordinal regression model tested the predictors of self-rated health.      Results: A Russian female drinker is middle-aged, high-educated, married/ cohabiting or divorced, resides from the urban area and is infrequent drinker. The frequency of drinking increases when she is young, high-educated, married/ cohabiting, resides from urban area. U-shaped relation between drinking and self-rated health was demonstrated: never drinkers and regular drinkers report poorer health than seldom-drinkers.  Conclusion: Predictors of female drinking in Russia are poorly investigated due to overrepresentation of research focused on men’s drinking. More studies are needed in order to explore the impact of drinking on self-rated health of  Russian women.