A 40-year study that began when participants were eight years old has produced some surprising predictors of alcoholism in adults:

• Aggressive, impulsive children - regardless of sex - were more likely to develop adult alcoholism.

• Family conflicts and limited parental education did not predict adult alcoholism.

• Popularity during childhood and adolescence was linked to drinking in amounts greater than average in early adulthood, and problem drinking later in life.

• Children with high IQs and who had attained educational status before age 18 were more likely to drink in above-average amounts as adults.

This fourth finding is the so-called "wine effect," according to Professor Rowell Huesman, who co-authored the study with Professor Eric Dubow of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. "Higher education is associated with greater wine consumption, and that produces the correlation," Huesman said.

The study was published in the May 2008 issue of the journal Addiction

Labels: adulthood, aggression, alcoholism