Smoking and poverty

Abstract

The problem of poverty leads to increased use of both legal and illegal drugs. Tobacco and alcohol are legal drugs that cause particular concern. Both drugs are widely abused in Germany by people attempting to escape their everyday problems. For decades it has been known that tobacco and alcohol use are more prevalent in lower socio-economic groups of society (those with low educational achievement, compared with people with further or higher education qualifications). Tobacco and alcohol use is particularly high among the unemployed, either temporarily or long-term, as well as people living alone. Children and women are more concerned about smoking than men. Female loneliness, often accompanied by the appearance of depressive reactions or of depression, increases the likelihood of cigarette smoking. Poor people spend up to 20% of their income on tobacco. In many industrialized countries, the age of onset of smoking is becoming younger and younger, increasing the risk of development of avoidable tobacco-related illnesses at an earlier age. This means that young smokers who develop chronic tobacco-related illnesses will require medical care over many years, increasing the cost of treating tobacco-related disease. Within the next few years, effective prevention programs against smoking must be developed, particularly for the lower socio-economic populations, in order to stop the cost of healthcare systems spiraling over the coming decades.

Associations of social and material deprivation with tobacco, alcohol, and psychotropic drug use, and gender: a population-based study

“…Interesting findings here were that among the seven deprivation domains studied: (1) low educational level, being a manual worker and low income were associated with psychotropic drug use among men as well as women; (2) tobacco use was related to low educational level, being a manual worker, low income and not being a home-owner in men, and to low income, living alone, unemployment and not being a home-owner in women. Other studies have stated that unemployment, low educational level, being a manual worker, being divorced or widowed, and living alone were associated with an increased risk of tobacco and psychotropic drug use in France and in Europe [1,2,5,35,36]. No relationship between nationality and any substance use was observed in our study – this was also true for psychotropic drug use in Europe (when controlling for co-factors) [1].…”

“…Excessive alcohol use appeared here to be more associated with poverty and poor living conditions [2] than with working issues. Other investigations have found a relationship between living alone and unemployment, and partner-relationship disruptions are strongly associated with suicidal behaviour among individuals with alcoholism [35,36]. …”

“…Factors to consider include low educational level, poor employment status (manual worker, unemployed), living alone, ethnic background (other than western European) low income, and not being a home-owner [28-33]. Findings over recent decades have shown that, taken together, these characteristics result in very difficult living conditions, markedly deteriorated health status, premature death, and unsafe health-related behaviours [8,24-40], notably substance use [1,2,8,23,25,35,36]. …”

Prevalence of inflammatory bowel disease: estimates for 2010 and trends in Germany from a large insurance-based regional cohort

“…Since a high socioeconomic status was reported to be associated with increased IBD risk [44,45], prevalence estimates of our study may be downwardly biased. Further, the prevalence of smoking, a habit which is at the same time a risk factor for CD and a protective factor for the development of UC, is high among AOK insurants compared to insurants of other German sickness funds [19,46,47]. Thus, CD estimates in our study may be upwardly biased, whereas UC estimates may be downwardly biased.…”

Relationship between occupational exposure to ionizing radiation and mortality at the French electricity company, period 1961–2003

“…Educational level was used as a proxy to control for the eVects of some lifestyle risk factors that are usually associated with socio-economic status, such as tobacco and alcohol consumption (Haustein 2006;Yang et al 2007) or quality of diet (Lopez-Azpiazu et al 2003). Educational level was indeed strongly associated with all the major causes of death considered in descriptive analyses, except with leukaemia mortality (which was expected).…”