Hawaiʻi continues to rank as one of the healthiest states in the nation, but there are some alarming trends in the islands when it comes to alcohol use — particularly among kūpuna.

Roughly 11% of older adults in Hawaiʻi reported excessive drinking in 2022, the highest rate of any state, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed by the United Health Foundation for its annual America’s Health Rankings report. That’s up from 8% in 2021.

The report defines excessive drinking as either binge drinking (downing four or more drinks on a single occasion for women and five or more for men) or heavy drinking (eight or more drinks a week for women and more than 15 drinks for men).

The statistics are worse when broken down by gender. Women over the age of 65 in Hawaiʻi were only slightly more likely to indulge in alcohol at higher rates than their peers on the mainland. Men in Hawaiʻi, however, are a different story.

Hawaiʻi generally has a high rate of alcohol consumption, with the state ranking 44th, near the bottom in the nation, for the percentage of adults overall who reported excessive alcohol consumption.

But the state also has the fastest-aging population in the nation, putting an extra spotlight on the health habits of older adults amid shortages of health care providers and caregivers.

Data Dive

Data Dives are Civil Beat's quick takes on numbers and data sets with a Hawai‘i angle.

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