Prevalence and intensity of cigarette smoking in Iranian households: measurement of socioeconomic inequality

ABSTRACT

Background

Cigarette smoking is one of the most important behavioral risk factors for chronic diseases. This study aimed to investigate socioeconomic inequalities in cigarette smoking (CS) among Iranian households.

Methods

Concentration index (C) was calculated to measure socioeconomic inequality in smoking and number of smoked cigarettes per month among households using data from the income-expenditure survey of the statistical center of Iran (SCI) in 2017. To identify the contribution of socioeconomic and demographic variables to the measured socioeconomic inequality, the C index was decomposed using Wagstaff method.

Results

The results indicated that 19.89% (N = 7547) of the households were smoking cigarettes with an average number of 87.91 (SD = 235.22) per month. The C index was −0.009 for smoking households (95% CI = −0.023, 0.006) and 0.004 (95% CI = −0.011, 0.019) for the number of cigarettes smoked per month and were not statistically significant. Most of provinces had pro-rich inequality in prevalence and intensity of CS. The province of residence had the highest contribution to inequality in smoking (66.82%) followed by SES and age of the household head.

Conclusions

The study concluded that the prevalence and intensity of cigarette smoking were more concentrated among low-SES groups. The strategies to control CS should be modified based on the province of residence, and socioeconomic inequalities in CS among households.

KEYWORDS:

• Inequality
• cigarette
• smoking
• socioeconomic status
• Iran

Abbreviations

CS	=	Cigarette Smoking
SCI	=	Statistical Center of Iran
CI	=	Concentration Index
GBD	=	Global Burden of Disease
WHO	=	World Health Organization
SES	=	Socioeconomic Status
PCA	=	Principal Components Analysis
SD	=	Standard Deviation.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank managers and staffs of statistical center of Iran, for providing data to conduct this study.

Authors’ contributions

AKK, RS, SA, ZA, and JYD developed the idea of this research. AKK, AP, KI, JYD were responsible for cleaning data and running statistical analysis and interpretation of the results. AKK, RS, SA, ZA, and JYD were responsible for writing the first draft. Also, all authors contributed to editing draft versions. All authors have read and approved the manuscript.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available because some results are still being analyzed. Data can be obtained from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The ethics committee of Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences approved the study (IR.KUMS.REC.1398.1062). This research was performed using secondary data from the Statistics Center of Iran (SCI). Informed consent to participate was obtained from all participants of the study by SCI.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences [grant number: 981033]. The funder has no role in the design, methods, subject recruitment, data collection, analysis and preparation of the paper.