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Austria alcohol drinking second best

The Local Austria
The Local Austria - [email protected]
Austria alcohol drinking second best
Photo: Paul Gillingwater

To the surprise of few, Austria remains the second largest consumer per capita of alcohol in the OECD.

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In this dubious competition, the clear winner by a large margin is Lithuania, the inhabitants of which consume 14.3 liters of pure alcohol per year.

Austrians come in second place, with 12.2 liters of alcohol per person per year.  The average for the OECD is nine litres, with Indonesia, a predominantly Muslim country, not surprisingly in last place with zero litres. 

The new OECD report "Health at a glance 2015" considered all factors which contribute to the health of inhabitants of a country, including OECD candidate countries as well.

In the 2014 report, Estonia ranked higher than Austria.  Consumption in Austria has declined, as in 2000 Austrians drank 13.7 litres per person.  In the same period, Lithuanians consumed an extra four litres per person, moving them into first place.

The smoking rate among adults in Austria was 23.2 percent in 2006 (latest year available), above the OECD average of 21.0 percent in 2012.


Photo: OECD

However life expectancy in Austria in 2012 was 81 years, almost one year higher than the OECD average of 80.2 years.

The obesity rate among adults in Austria, based on self-reported height and weight, was 12.4 percent in 2006, up from 9.1 percent in 1999.

This was lower than in Germany (14.7 percent in 2009) and many other OECD countries, but the OECD warned that the growing prevalence of obesity foreshadows an increase in diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, and higher health care costs in the future.

In Austria, 76 percent of health spending was funded by public sources in 2012, slightly more than the average of 72 percent in OECD countries. The growth rate in health spending slowed down during the economic crisis, but started to increase by three percent in 2012. 

 

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