To elaborate upon the issue, this study aimed to: (a) quantify the stability of drinking across the adult life‐course according to baseline categories of consumption; and (b) establish the presence of a sex interaction, given sex‐specific differences in the mean trajectory of consumption throughout the adult life course 7. The study also includes two post‐hoc analyses. The first reports within‐category differences in the trajectory of alcohol consumption according to the frequency of baseline consumption, owing to a greater regularity of drinking with increasing age 14 and the possibility that this may be associated with the volume of consumption. The second describes changes to the probability of transition from drinking to non‐drinking throughout the adult life‐course. This final analysis tackles a limitation of the primary analyses, which estimate mean drinking trajectories and so provide no indication as to how participants transition between drinking categories with increasing age. Such analyses help to reveal whether declining trajectories occur as a consequence of a general decrease in consumption, or a sudden transition among some constituent drinkers to complete abstention.
