Alcohol Consumption Board Screensaver
The Alcohol Consumption Board screensaver ranks real recorded alcohol per-capita consumption by country. It is free, runs in your browser, and ESC exits.
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How the Alcohol Consumption Board screensaver works
The saver reads real recorded alcohol per-capita consumption data from the WHO's own Global Health Observatory API.
Countries are ranked by their real latest reported alcohol consumption.
The pipeline refreshes on the WHO's own periodic release schedule.
No key is required for this key-less public endpoint.
How alcohol consumption is defined
The figure shown for each country is recorded alcohol per capita consumption, in litres of pure alcohol per person per year, for people aged fifteen and over. It comes from the WHO Global Health Observatory and counts only alcohol captured in production, import, export and sales data, often via taxation, converted to pure alcohol so that beer, wine and spirits can be added together.
Two things limit what it can tell you. First, it is an average over everyone aged fifteen and over, including people who do not drink at all, so it does not describe how much a typical drinker consumes. Second, because only recorded alcohol is counted, homemade, illicit and informal alcohol is left out, which can matter a lot in some countries.
WHO draws on several kinds of source, in order of priority: government statistics, then alcohol industry statistics from public sources, then FAO data (FAOSTAT), so data quality varies by country. It is a descriptive indicator of average national consumption, not a measure of harm, and it is not guidance on drinking.
A worked example
A real country's most recent reported alcohol consumption is ranked against the real others, with bars easing into place as the board loads.
Settings & tips
- Consumption is litres of pure alcohol per capita, ages 15 and over.
- Accent recolours the bars and header text.
- Values and years are real, unedited WHO Global Health Observatory data.
Frequently asked questions
- Is this real health data?
- Yes — real recorded alcohol per-capita consumption figures from the WHO's own Global Health Observatory API.
- Is a key needed?
- No. The GHO OData API is fully key-less.
- How often does it update?
- The pipeline re-reads the WHO's own dataset periodically, on whatever schedule WHO republishes that indicator.
- Is it free?
- Yes — free, no download, in your browser.
- Why can the data be several years old?
- WHO compiles national figures from government and industry sources and releases them periodically, so the latest published series can trail the present.
- Does a high figure mean most people drink heavily?
- No. It is a population average that includes non-drinkers, so it can rise because a minority drinks a lot or a majority drinks moderately.