How to quit smoking cigarettes

Cigarette smoking and marital status

The prevalence of cigarette smoking varies considerably according to marital status. It is much lower among married people than among those in any of the three other marital status categories (single, cohabiting, and widowed, divorced or separated). This is not explained by the association between age and marital status (for example, married people and those who are widowed, divorced or separated are older, on average, than single people). Table 8.5 shows that in every age group married people were less likely to be smokers than were other respondents (although this is much less marked among those aged 60 and over). For example, about 40% of those aged 25 to 34 who were single or cohabiting were smokers, compared with only 24% of those who were married.

Regional variation in cigarette smoking

The data presented so far have been for Great Britain, but the targets included in the White Paper Smoking Kills and in the NHS Cancer Plan relate to England only. Table 8.6 shows that in 2002, overall prevalence in England was 26%, the same as in Great Britain as a whole. As in previous years, prevalence in 2002 was significantly higher in Scotland, at 28%, than in the rest of Great Britain. In England, prevalence tended to be higher in the north of the country than in the midlands and the south.

Cigarette smoking and socio-economic classification

The National Statistics Socio-economic classification (NS-SEC), which was introduced in 2001, does not allow categories to be collapsed into broad non-manual and manual groupings. Since the Cancer Plan targets for England relate particularly to those in the manual socioeconomic groups, the old socio-economic groupings have been recreated for this report in Table 8.9. Because of the new occupation coding, the classifications are not exactly the same, and comparisons with previous years should be treated with caution. The GHS has consistently shown striking differences in the prevalence of cigarette smoking in relation to socioeconomic group, with smoking being considerably more prevalent among those in manual groups than among those in non-manual groups. In the 1970s and 1980s, the prevalence of cigarette smoking fell more sharply among those in non-manual than in manual groups, so that differences between the groups became proportionately greater (table not shown). There was little further change in the relative proportions smoking cigarettes during the 1990s. In England in 2002, 31% of those in manual groups were cigarette smokers, suggesting some progress in relation to the targets set out in the Cancer Plan. These are to reduce prevalence among those in the manual group from 33% in 1998 to 27% in 2010, if the targets are increased by one percentage point to allow for the effect of weighting the data. However, since the proportion of those in non-manual groups who are cigarette smokers has fallen by a similar amount (from 22% in 1998 to 20% in 2002) the differential between non-manual and manual has not reduced. Caution is advisable when making comparisons over this period because the data may have been affected by two matters. These are:

• the change from head of household to household reference person as the basis for assessing socioeconomic group;

• the introduction of the revised occupation coding and socio-economic classification.

In England in 2002 32% of men living in households in the manual group smoked cigarettes compared with 21% of those in non-manual households. The corresponding proportions for women were 30% and 20%. Table 8.10 shows the prevalence of cigarette smoking in 2002 in relation to the eight- and three- category versions of NS-SEC. As was the case with the socioeconomic groupings used previously, there were striking differences between the various classes. Prevalence was lowest among those in higher professional and higher managerial households (14% and 16% respectively) and highest (33%) among those whose household reference person was in a semi-routine or routine occupation.

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