London, April 6 (IANS) A new study has shown that women who are highly educated are more likely to consume alcohol than their less-educated counterparts.

The research led by London School of Economics and involving thousands of 39-year-old British women and men, showed a similar link between educational attainment and alcohol consumption among men, but the correlation was less strong.

"The more educated women are, the more likely they are to drink alcohol on most days and to report having problems due to their drinking patterns," telegraph.co.uk quoted the report as saying.

"The better-educated appear to be the ones who engage the most in problematic patterns of alcohol consumption," it added.

The findings revealed that women who achieved "medium" or "high" test marks as schoolgirls are up to 2.1 times more likely to drink daily as adults.

According to study authors Francesca Borgonovi and Maria Huerta, the possible explanations as to why better-educated women drink more is that they tend to have children later, postponing the responsibilities of parenthood. They may have more active social lives or work in male-dominated workplaces with a drinking culture. As girls, they may have grown up in middle-class families and seen their parents drink regularly.

They also found that women with some educational qualifications were 71 percent more likely to drink on most days compared to women with no qualifications.

And women with degree-level qualifications were 86 percent more likely to do so.

"This raises concerns which need to be addressed," said a spokesman for the Alcohol Concern charity.

"People with higher qualifications have more disposable income, and we have seen a trend where there has been an increase in the marketing of wine, particularly aimed at working women.

"People who abuse alcohol face a higher risk of suffering from health problems including cancer, liver cirrhosis, lung and cardiovascular disease, and mental and behavioural issues," he added.