A wealth of literature suggests that normative and heavy alcohol consumption continue to follow a historical pattern of greater prevalence among males as compared to females. Some prior research suggested that sex-specific factors might explain some of this gender gap. Generally speaking, though, more recent studies have indicated that the sources of differences for most complex traits, both genetic and environmental, are similar for males and females. To the best of our knowledge, however, no studies have tested whether genetic and environmental factors common to both sexes are more often expressed in males, on average, thereby accounting for some of the mean sex difference in alcohol use. The current study used nationally representative data from American twin respondents and a multiple group genetic factor model with a mean structure to address this gap in the literature. Results provide no evidence of sex differences in covariance structure and suggest that genetic and nonshared environmental influences common to both sexes largely explain why male alcohol use is more frequent and severe, on average, than is female use. In contrast, shared environmental influences seem to play a less important role. We discuss our findings in the context of the existing literature and chart out directions for future research.

大量文献表明，与女性相比，规范性饮酒和大量饮酒继续遵循男性中患病率较高的历史模式。先前的一些研究表明，特定于性别的因素可能解释了这种性别差异。总体而言，尽管如此，最近的研究表明，大多数复杂性状的遗传和环境差异来源对于男性和女性而言都是相似的。据我们所知，尚无研究测试是否普遍表达男女共同的遗传和环境因素平均而言，这可以解释男性饮酒的平均性别差异。本研究使用来自美国双胞胎受访者的具有全国代表性的数据和具有均值结构的多组遗传因子模型来解决文献中的这一空白。结果没有提供协方差结构中性别差异的证据，并且表明男女共同的遗传和非共享环境影响在很大程度上解释了为什么平均而言，男性饮酒比女性饮酒更为频繁和严重。相反，共享的环境影响似乎没有那么重要。我们在现有文献的背景下讨论我们的发现，并为将来的研究指明方向。