Monday, May 19, 2014

Smoking: relationship between smoking and deprivation

Hot off the press, the graph below shows the percentage of smokers in each deprivation area, 10 being the most deprived. The data is extracted from the Census 2013 and was released this month in the NZDep2013 Index of Deprivation

Figure3: Current smoking in 2013 by NZDep2013

The chicken and egg question poses itself. Do people smoke because they are deprived, or are they deprived because they smoke?

4 comments:

Brendan McNeill said...

The answer to your question is likely both / and.

How do the poor afford cigarettes?

Andrei said...

Of course there is nothing the calvinistic middle class enjoy more than depriving the poor of their pleasures.

Anonymous said...

How do the poor afford cigarettes?

the 10% of nett taxpayers who pay for everything for everyone else give them benefits.

who else do the 90% afford anything else?

Richard said...

Brendan, tobacco is a fiercely addictive drug.

The poor afford cigarettes any way they can.

Tobacco tax is an unconscionable assault on the poor, one that might as well have been designed to keep them that way. :-(