In this article, the BBC makes a link between beer drinking and the working class.
BBC News : Belgian beer gets the travel bug
In short, blue collar workers drink beer after work, while white collar workers don't. The change toward less blue collar and more white collar workers correlates with the drop in beer consumption, despite strong cultural predisposition toward beer.
Belgium remains the 4th biggest consumer of beer per capita in the developed world, after Ireland, Germany and Austria. It has also the greatest variety of beers (about 800) per capita in the world, with about 80 kinds of beer per million inhabitants, against about 62.5 for Germany. 100 years ago, there were over 3000 sorts of beer in Belgium, and the number is continually decreasing.
BBC News : Belgian beer gets the travel bug
BBC said:But Belgians themselves are drinking less and less beer. Over the past 25 years beer consumption in the country has fallen by a quarter.
Theo Vervloet is head of the Belgian Brewers Association and thinks social change is to blame for the decline.
"Big industrial companies are leaving Belgium", he says.
"More and more it is offices, banks and European institutions now. People drink less there.
"Ten years ago you had a factory with 10,000 workers, everyone finished work in the evening and all the guys went out to drink for an hour.
"That doesn't happen any more."
In short, blue collar workers drink beer after work, while white collar workers don't. The change toward less blue collar and more white collar workers correlates with the drop in beer consumption, despite strong cultural predisposition toward beer.
Belgium remains the 4th biggest consumer of beer per capita in the developed world, after Ireland, Germany and Austria. It has also the greatest variety of beers (about 800) per capita in the world, with about 80 kinds of beer per million inhabitants, against about 62.5 for Germany. 100 years ago, there were over 3000 sorts of beer in Belgium, and the number is continually decreasing.