Tuberculosis is one of the leading causes of mortality from infectious diseases in many countries. To date, there has not been a satisfactory explanation for the gender imbalance in the prevalence and mortality from tuberculosis. The gender differences in tuberculosis mortality in Russia are among the highest in the world.
The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis of a close relationship between alcohol consumption and the gender gap in tuberculosis mortality rate in Russia at the aggregate level.
The Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) time series analysis was used to estimate the relationship between population drinking and gender gap in tuberculosis mortality between 1980 and 2015.
The results of analysis also indicate that 61.3% of the gender gap in tuberculosis mortality in Russia could be attributed to harmful drinking.
The results of present study indicate that harmful drinking is the main behavioral driver explaining the cause of high gender differences in the mortality rate from tuberculosis and its dramatic variations in Russia.