UK average pint of lager price

As the price of a pint of lager in the UK rose steadily from 2010 to 2023, Germans drank measurably less beer per capita — a negative correlation of -0.9739 that has alarmed no one more than the Germans themselves. The obvious interpretation is that expensive British lager has been causing German beer consumption to fall via some kind of transnational psychic deterrent. Alternatively, there is a simpler explanation, but it is considerably less fun.

German per-capita beer consumption has been in a long secular decline, dropping from around 107 liters per person in 2010 to roughly 88 liters by the early 2020s, driven by health consciousness, demographic aging, and competition from wine and craft spirits. UK pint prices have risen steadily over the same period due to inflation, rising pub operating costs, alcohol duty increases, and the post-Brexit supply chain pressures on hospitality. Both trends are moving in a straight line in opposite directions over thirteen years, which mechanically produces a very strong negative correlation. They share a timeline, not a mechanism.

A strong negative correlation is just as meaningless as a strong positive one when the underlying variables have never heard of each other. The sign of the number does not add information about causation — it only tells you which way the lines point.