Drinking Cultures Around The World (And How Alcohol Affects Your Health Insurance)
- Nov 9, 2025
- 3 min read
Whether you drink alcohol or not, it’s important to know about the drinking culture in the country where you’re living in as an expat.
Another thing you must consider is the impact drinking alcohol can have on your international health insurance policy. When you take out health insurance as an expat, your insurer will ask you how often you drink – this can impact your eligibility for health insurance and the premiums you pay.
In this article, we’ll look at alcohol laws and drinking cultures around the world, and the impact drinking alcohol can have on both your health and your health insurance.
In this article
Drinking cultures around the world
All countries have laws around who can drink alcohol, governing the age at which people can purchase alcohol, where it can be drunk, and restrictions around drink driving.
In many countries where alcohol is legal, you can expect to encounter a drinking culture. In countries with a strong drinking culture, there is often a societal expectation on people to drink socially. If you drink, you may find that adapting to a country’s drinking culture can help you make friends and fit in like one of the locals.
Having said that, it’s important to remember that alcohol is detrimental to your health and wellbeing, so you shouldn’t put pressure on yourself to drink if you don’t feel comfortable doing so.
Alcohol around the world
Every country has its own unique laws around alcohol, dictating such things as:
Who can drink alcohol
Where alcohol can be drunk
Who can sell alcohol
How old a person must be when purchasing or consuming alcohol
Whether a person is allowed to be intoxicated in public
Restrictions on the things you can do while intoxicated, such as driving a vehicle
Where alcohol is legal and socially acceptable, many countries have developed their own drinking cultures. A drinking culture is often measured by how many people within the population drink alcohol, the frequency they drink, and the amount they tend to consume when drinking.
Understanding and indeed taking part in a country’s drinking culture is a big part of adjusting to life as an expat, and is often cited as a cause of culture shock, but is by no means a necessity.
Which countries drink the most alcohol?
According to the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the countries that drink the most alcohol per capita are:
Rank
Country
Units consumed per capita
1
Cook Islands
12.97
2
Latvia
12.9
3
Czechia
12.73
4
Lithuania
11.93
5
Austria
11.9
6
Antigua and Barbuda
11.88
7
11.65
8
France
11.44
9
Bulgaria
11.18
10
Slovenia
11.05
11
Luxembourg
11
12
Andorra
10.99
13
Poland
10.96
14
Romania
10.96
15
Ireland
10.91
16
Hungary
10.79
17
10.72
18
Belarus
10.57
19
Germany
10.56
20
10.37
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Moving abroad is a life-changing experience and can be challenging
Health effects of alcohol consumption
Worldwide, there are around 2.3 billion regular alcohol drinkers, representing about 29% of the global population. The average daily intake among drinkers is around 3.8 units of alcohol per day, roughly equivalent to two 150ml glasses of wine, 750ml of beer or two 40ml measures of spirits. More than half of global alcohol users are in Europe, the Americas and the Pacific region, and the number of global drinkers is expected to increase in the next 10 years.
The most recent research has suggested that drinking any amount of alcohol is bad for one’s health. The World Health Organization (WHO) has classified alcohol as a Group One carcinogen, which means it can be directly attributed to the development of cancer – and the more alcohol a person consumes, the higher their risk of developing cancer.
Alcohol raises the risk of developing several forms of cancer, including:
Mouth and throat cancers
Voice box (larynx) cancer
Oesophagus cancer
Colo-rectal cancers
Liver cancer
Breast cancer
It may also increase the likelihood of developing stomach, pancreatic and prostate cancer.
Every year, around three million preventable deaths are caused by alcohol consumption, representing 5.3% of all deaths in the world. These figures are much higher among 20–39 year olds, with 13.5% of all deaths in this age group attributed to alcohol. Furthermore, 5.1% of all diseases treated every year are linked in some way to alcohol consumption.
Alcohol is also classed as an addictive substance. Around 237 million men and 46 million women worldwide struggle with some form of alcohol dependency, with the majority of these people in Europe and the Americas.
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