Abstract
Summary: Male excess mortality, particularly from diseases, has increased quite dramatically since World War II. In this article the impact of increasing alcohol consumption on male excess mortality from diseases in Norway is studied. Modem statistical tools for analysing temporal data are used to test if the highly correlated trends in the two Variables are spurious or signal a significant causal relationship. It is concluded that although increasing alcohol consumption has had significant effects on mortality rates in a restricted class of alcohol‐related diseases, its effect on general mortality appears to have been marginal and not statistically significant.