Drinking After Divorce: Men Are More Likely Than Women To Turn To Drinking After Split, Study Suggests

Who's more prone to hit the bottle after divorce -- men or women?

A new study presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association on Saturday indicates that men are more likely than women to turn to drinking after divorce. As a whole, married men appear to drink less than their single and divorced counterparts.

By contrast, the study suggests that married women drink more than their divorced or widowed friends -- partly because they lived with men who had higher levels of alcohol use.

Still, the research indicates that men consistently drink more than women and are more prone to develop an alcohol problem.

"Marriage and divorce have different consequences for men's and women's alcohol use," study author Corinne Reczek told Health Day. "For men, it's tempered by being married and exacerbated by being divorced."

Reczek, an assistant professor in sociology at the University of Cincinnati, and her team reviewed data from a long-running behavioral study of 5,305 people in Wisconsin. The team then reportedly conducted in-depth interviews with 120 of the respondents to determine why their drinking habits had changed.

This isn't the first time marital status has been shown to influence alcohol consumption. In 2004, a study conducted by Australian National University suggested that married couples generally drink less than their non-married counterparts. And last year, a study out of the Cardiff University suggested that happily married couples were more likely to eat healthily than other people.

For more divorce research findings, click through the slideshow below: