Cross-cultural and cross-temporal explanations of drinking behavior: contributions from epidemiology, life-span developmental psychology and the sociology of aging.

A review is presented of the contributions to understanding historical and cultural variation in drinking practices from three disciplines--epidemiology, life-span developmental psychology and the sociology of aging. It is concluded that while these disciplines have made major methodological contributions to understanding these variations, theory is lacking. Reasons for the paucity of theory and the lack of hypotheses are advanced, as are frameworks in which to test competitive hypotheses across temporal and cultural boundaries.