The question of how and why population-level patterns of alcohol consumption change is of fundamental importance to alcohol research (Room, 1992; Room et al., 2009; Keyes et al., 2011; Bloomfield et al., 2016; Savic et al., 2016). In Great Britain, this debate has recently focused on understanding a long rise in per capita consumption from the early 1970s until the mid-2000s, which has been followed by a decade-long decline (British Beer and Pub Association, 2015).
