- Mark Dolliver

NEW YORK No recession is complete without popular wisdom asserting that hard times have brought an upsurge in drinking. A Gallup poll says it isn't so, at least in the current downturn. In mid-June polling for its annual look at Americans' drinking habits, Gallup finds little change in the proportion of people who drink or in the amount that drinkers are tossing back.

Sixty-four percent of respondents said they "have occasion to use alcoholic beverages such as liquor, wine or beer," while 36 percent put themselves in the "total abstainer" category. The proportion saying they drink is right in the middle of the narrow range (from 62 percent to 66 percent) within which the figure has moved during the past decade.

Of course, some people who aren't total abstainers don't drink very often. Among self-identified drinkers in the current survey, 65 percent reported having had at least one drink within the past seven days. Gallup notes that this matches last year's figure and is "similar to the finding each year since 2001." Likewise, the number of drinkers who had at least eight drinks in the week before being polled -- 14 percent -- is "also quite typical for the decade." Drinkers reported consuming 4.8 drinks per week on average, up slightly from last year but "similar to the figures for several years prior to that." Consumers may be talking more about drinking, but Gallup's data rebuts the notion that they're doing more about it.

If people aren't drinking more, are they drinking different? Not especially. When drinkers were asked to say what sort of alcohol they imbibe most often, beer got the most votes (40 percent, vs. 42 percent last year), as it has nearly every year since 1992, when Gallup began inquiring into the matter. Wine was the runner-up (34 percent, up from 31 percent last year), with liquor trailing behind (21 percent, vs. 23 percent last year).

As usual, different demographic cohorts expressed different preferences in alcohol. While beer was the drink of choice for a majority of male drinkers (58 percent), wine was tops among their female counterparts (50 percent). Beer was the favorite of 50 percent of 18-34-year-old drinkers, 44 percent of 35-54-year-olds and 26 percent of those 55 and older.

The pattern was reversed for wine, which was the preferred drink of 50 percent of the 55-plusers, 32 percent of the 35-54-year-olds and 20 percent of the 18-34s. Liquor scored a bit higher among the 18-34s (24 percent) than among the 35-54s (19 percent) or 55-plusers (21 percent).

Combining the age and gender data, beer had a particularly strong showing among male drinkers age 18-49, with 66 percent identifying it as their alcoholic beverage of choice.