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Looking at the number, Brooklyn has the highest number of high school students consuming alcohol among the five boroughs in 2009. By percentage, Staten Island has the highest number indicating that about 38% of all high school students in Staten Island had at least one alcoholic beverage in the 30days from when the survey was taken. But by number, 38% translates to only 5,000 because Staten Island is lowly populated.
I’m a bit surprised by these results. I thought heaving drinking in adults in high poverty neighborhoods would be the highest in all the years but my hypothesis was wrong. There seems to be a relatively little correlation between poverty and heavy drinking. In year 2003, percent of heavy drinking in neighborhood with high poverty was the highest (5%) but it was the lowest in year 2007 (3.8%). However, it does seem like the percentage of heavy drinking in medium poverty neighborhood is usually the lowest among the three poverty levels.
Observation from the scatterplot indicates that binge drinking in adults increase as access of alcohol in service outlets increased. Majority of binge drinking in adults remain at about 13% until about 200 service outlets available but from 1,000 to 1,200, percentage shoots up to about 36%.
This graph compares binge drinking in New York City by age. The percent of adults and high school students binge drinking throughout all years recorded in the graph (2003-2010) is similar, both remaining around 15%. From about 2005 to 2007, percentage of adult binge drinking was slightly higher than that of high school students. The graph also indicates that binge drinking did not decrease in all ages throughout New York City.
The red areas indicate the neighborhoods with the highest binge drinking percentage of 18%-3.5%. From the map, we can conclude that the binge drinking rates in Queens and parts of Long Island are relatively low. Astoria, Greenpoint, Fordam (Bronx),Union Square, Chelsea, as well as Upper East Side and Upper West Side show the highest adult binge drinking percentages. This makes sense because there is a greater access to alcohol in many of the areas mentioned above.
