Smoking - Analyzing Multiple Indicators Simulanteously

Background: Smoking takes more American lives each year than alcohol, car crashes, suicides, AIDS, homicide, and illegal drugs combined. This study provides insights into common social attributes among smoking populations. By detecting the indicators of smoking, prevention programs can be implemented for at risk population, thereby tackling current as well as future smoking problems.

Methodology: We used the 2000 census report and the data set from the CDC national cancer institute website to cover more than 3000 US counties. In addition to the demographic variables such as gender, level of education, poverty, and marital status, we used four social variables: the percentage of individuals who are immigrants, unemployed, uninsured, and urban. We assessed the association of the variables with smoking by using least square regression method.

Results: Significant variables were assessed by a p-value less than the significance value of 0.05. After adjustment for outliers and collinearity, the research finding showed that immigrants and unemployed individuals had higher smoking prevalence. Moreover, it indicated that the level of education was inversely associated with smoking.

Discussion: Globalization and industrialization have led to migration across geographical borders. There were 28.4 million immigrants for the United States in 2000 alone. Immigrants have led to increase unemployment rates and lower socioeconomic status (SES). Lower SES leads to smoking. Since the demography of smoking has clearly changed over time, efforts to prevent tobacco use should also change to target unemployed and immigrants.