Americans Not Drinking Enough Alcohol

DailyMail_World_Ethanol_Consumption
According to maps released by the World Health Organisation, Americans are not doing their part to support the world alcohol industry. Clearly Russians are holding up their end much better than North Americans or Brazilians, on average.

MoscowTimesMeanwhile the small Russian child is becoming something of an endangered species, with ethnic Russian birthrates at very low levels, while Russian death rates -- particularly among men -- are quite high due to a combination of factors.

The population will probably shrink to 116 million by 2050 from 140 million last year, forcing the government's age-related expenditures to rise to 25.5 percent of GDP from 13 percent in 2010 in the rating agency's "base-case scenario," S&P credit analysts led by Frank Gill in London said in a research note last week.

..."Russia's aging population will likely place substantial pressure on economic growth performance and public finances," the analysts wrote. "By 2035, we expect that Russia's fiscal indicators will have weakened such that they would be more in line with sovereigns currently rated in the speculative-grade category, because, in our view, the projected improvement in GDP per capita would not be able to offset the potential fiscal deterioration." _MoscowTimes_via_LaRussophobe

The Russian retirement age is 60 for men and 55 for women, whereas life expectancy for Russian men is 59 and for Russian women is 72. This gives Russian women a much longer time span to drink after retirement, than men -- who typically will never reach retirement age. [Al Fin comment: Russian men are forced to drink much more than Russian women to compensate for their much shorter lifespans.]

Out in the wild Russian East of Siberia, ethnic Russians are losing the majority to illegal immigrants from China. Freed from the one-child policy, Siberian Chinese are likely to propagate at a higher rate than the more vodka-oriented Russians, which makes it likely that the Chinese will eventually inherit the natural wealth of East Siberia by demographic default.

The bursting of the Chinese economic bubble may provide an impetus for even faster Chinese out-migration to areas such as Siberia and overseas locations.

Al Fin futurists do not claim that demography alone is destiny. But when you combine debt, demography, and drinking, you come much closer to the mark.

Bad weather, both hot and cold, in Russia is contributing to lower crop harvests, which only adds to the immediate economic woes of the nation. When you combine the lack of any rule of law with a dictatorial mafiacracy of a government, and a generalised societal malaise and sense of futility, Russia does not seem a good place to raise a family or plan for the future. That widespread feeling keeps birthrates depressed, and drinking rates high.

Russia needs a change, but with its current government, it can only look forward to more of the same -- only worse. At least Russians understand the need to support the global alcohol industry, in these times of prolonged global recession.