Prevalence and intensity of cigarette smoking in Iranian households: measurement of socioeconomic inequality

BackgroundCigarette smoking is one of the most important behavioral risk factors for chronic diseases. This study aimed to investigate socioeconomic inequalities in cigarette smoking (CS) among Iranian households.MethodsConcentration index (C) was calculated to measure socioeconomic inequality in smoking and number of smoked cigarettes per month among households using data from the income-expenditure survey of the statistical center of Iran (SCI) in 2017. To identify the contribution of socioeconomic and demographic variables to the measured socioeconomic inequality, the C index was decomposed using Wagstaff method.ResultsThe results indicated that 19.89% (N = 7547) of the households were smoking cigarettes with an average number of 87.91 (SD = 235.22) per month. The C index was -0.009 for smoking households (95% CI = -0.023, 0.006) and 0.004 (95% CI = -0.011, 0.019) for the number of cigarettes smoked per month and were not statistically significant. Most of provinces had pro-rich inequality in prevalence and intensity of CS. The province of residence had the highest contribution to inequality in smoking (66.82%) followed by SES and age of the household head.ConclusionsThe study concluded that the prevalence and intensity of cigarette smoking were more concentrated among low-SES groups. The strategies to control CS should be modified based on the province of residence, and socioeconomic inequalities in CS among households.