Social and Health Costs of Tobacco Smoking in Australia: Level, Trend and Determinants

Abstract

In this paper, a major health related issue tobacco smoking in Australia has been addressed. Findings reveal that tobacco smoking is the largest single cause of death and a key risk factor for some deadly diseases in Australia. The overall social and economic costs of tobacco smoking are huge, and rapidly increasing over time. Although the trend in smoking is slowly decreasing during recent decades, the current adults smoking prevalence rate is about 23 per cent. More than a quarter of households in Australia have weekly expenditure on tobacco products and nearly one in each ten households spent more than 50 dollars per week for smoking. Specific socioeconomic characteristics such as households with unemployed reference person, having two or more unemployed persons, and in renting dwellings have significantly higher smoking expenditure. The demographic attributes show that more males are smoker than females and smoking rate is higher among younger aged adults for both sexes.