This article is from page 18 of the 2013-10-08 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 18 JPG
CLARE third-level students drink more per person than students from any other county in Ireland. According to a survey of more than 3, 500 students attending University College Dublin, Clare students drink more than 351 alcoholic beverages per year or almost one a day.
This means that students from the Banner county are Ireland’s biggest drinkers. Students from Cork, Waterford, Kilkenny and Dublin also featured high in the survey with students from Donegal, Mona- ghan, Carlow and Tipperary North amongst the countries lowest drinkers.
According to the study, which was carried out by ‘Discover Magazine’, the social and economic background of a student did not have a direct correlation with the amount that that student drank.
“We find relatively small effects of parental background variables on how much their college attending children drink. Neither father’s education, mothers’ age, whether a parent is still married, and parental incomes have any statistically significant effects on students’ drink- ing,” read the study.
The study did find that parents drinking habits did have an influence on their children, with a mothers drinking effecting all offspring while a fathers drinking only tending to influence male offspring.
“We find that drinking of mothers significantly impacts the number of drinks consumed by both female and male students about equally. But drinking of fathers appears only to influence drinking of their college attending sons,” it said.
Boys who attended an all-boy’s school, or a boarding school, also went on to drink more in college.