In summary, baseline‐defined categories of alcohol consumption appear largely stable across the life‐course among both sexes, except for heavier drinkers, where intake declined markedly with increasing age. These downward trajectories do not seem to be driven by transitions to non‐drinking, indicating that attenuations to the volume of consumption may be gradual. Owing to unstable trajectories among heavier baseline drinkers, there is an indication that cohorts of older people are at particular risk of misclassifying former heavy drinkers as moderate consumers of alcohol. This may have implications for risk estimates derived in studies of predominantly older adults.
