Alcohol use trajectories across the life course: Influences of childhood predictors and consequences for late-life health

•Life course data on alcohol consumption patterns are rare.•Retrospective interviews provide a useful technique to obtain such data.•We modelled life course changes in frequency and quantity of drinking in men and women.•Childhood SES, parental alcohol use, early onset predicted life course alcohol use.•Life course heavy drinking in men was linked to more alcohol-related comorbidities. The cumulative, negative health effects of alcohol consumption are exacerbated in older adulthood. We used a ‘life course epidemiology’ approach to explore how alcohol use trajectories develop across the lifespan, what early life events influence these trajectories and their associations with late-life health. Survey data combined with retrospective life course history interviews were collected from 749 non-lifetime alcohol abstainer adults aged 61–81 years (51 % female). Frequency and quantity items of the AUDIT-C assessed alcohol use across each decade of life. Early life factors were childhood socioeconomic status, parental health behaviours, and age of drinking onset. Health outcomes were alcohol-related conditions. Latent class growth analysis yielded two life course trajectories for women: consistently infrequent, low quantity drinking (Group 1: 48 %) and increasingly frequent, low quantity drinking (Group 2: 52 %). Men showed three trajectories: consistently infrequent, low quantity drinking (Group 3: 36 %); increasingly frequent, low quantity drinking (Group 4: 51 %); and drinking with increasing frequency and quantity until midlife, after which consumption gradually declined (Group 5: 13 %). Better childhood socioeconomic status was associated with Groups 2 and 4. Later drinking onset was associated with Groups 1 and 3. Parental alcohol misuse, early drinking initiation and childhood socioeconomic adversity were predictive of Group 5. Those in Group 5 were five-to-seven times more likely to have alcohol-related comorbidities. Early life experiences influence life course hazardous alcohol use. Interventions across the life course, from childhood, when drinking may be initiated, through to older adulthood, when sensitivity to alcohol increases, are needed.