Between 1997 and 2014, 552,837 sample adults ages 18+ completed the NHIS, an average of 30,713 respondents per year. Our final analytic sample included 147,096 respondents who were age 60+. Of these, 42,353 (9,367 men and 32,986 women) were lifetime abstainers, 36,253 (16,692 men and 19,561 women) were former drinkers, and 65,303 (31,803 men, 33,500 women) were current drinkers. Within the current drinkers (excluding 3,043 women who were current drinkers in 2014), 13.3% of respondents reported binge drinking on at least one day in the past year (6,570 men [1997–2014] and 1,737 women [1997–2013]).
