Sammendrag
This project aims to provide a detailed description of the connection between tobacco use and social inequality. Over the past century wide sections of the Norwegian population have consumed tobacco products, mostly cigarettes (manufactured and hand-rolled) and snuff. Male members of the bourgeoisie took to smoking in the first years of the twentieth century. Contemporary advertising has been shown to create associations between smoking, modernity and elegance. Smoking among males peaked in the 1950s when around 70 per cent of the male population smoked. By 1952, 72 per cent of male doctors were smoking, and 44 per cent of female doctors. The latter figure was dramatically above the average for women generally at the time, which was around 20 per cent. In the decades since the 50s to the end of the century, the proportion of male daily smokers fell while the proportion of of female daily smokers reached a plateau of around 35 per cent. Smoking among both sexes has continued to fall to around 24 per cent today.
This project seeks to illuminate three issues.
1) The importance of education to smoking status of first-generation immigrants in Oslo. By examining the likelihood of immigrants of different educational achievements being daily smokers, former smokers or never-smokers we can examine how these groups fit with a diffusion process whereby the more highly educated are the first to begin and the first to quit smoking.
2) We ask whether a relationship obtains between education and subjective evaluation of the risk of nicotine dependence and smoking. Prevalence of male smoking in Norway and most Western countries peaked in the late 1950s. The ensuing decline in the proportion of smokers has been particularly high among the highly educated. This study asks whether differences in risk perceptions between highly educated and less educated people can shed light on this pattern.
3) The importance of cohort, age and period to smoking in Norway. Given the powerful and socially unequal decline in smoking prevalence over the past decades, we need to ask ourselves whether the decline is due to changes in cohorts’ preferences or to the changing age structure of the population.
The three points are examined as part of a PhD project.
Several studies have already shed light on the relationship between smoking, snuff-use and social inequality. The data we shall be using in this project stem from surveys carried out by SIRUS and other institutions.
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