After following one generation as they grew old, researchers showed that women who left school with few qualifications were more likely to binge drink when they were older while educated women usually binged on drinks in their 20’s.

Women were categorized as binge drinkers if they had seven or more units at a time.

It is thought that age effect might be a consequence of different trajectories of work and domestic circumstances creating opportunities for binge drinking in different social groups at different ages. Less educated women usually had their children earlier as well as different employment types with differing drinking cultures.

The research showed how age and gender could be used as pre-indicators of alcohol consumption but it is also important to realize what drives women to drink, so that Governments could make sure their anti-drinking policies target older women as well as adolescence.

The alcohol industry is not helping much. They have been more and more targeting the female market with around £1 billion a year being spent on advertising.

More information is needed on the consequences of binge drinking, so that proper measures could be taken and proper groups of people targeted.