Analysis of Factors Affecting the Tobacco Use in Iran: a Household Budget Survey

Recently, one of the biggest achievements of public health programs around the world has been the decline in tobacco use. The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of economic, social and demographic factors affecting smoking in Iran. The current research was applied-descriptive. This study was conducted for 114826 Iranian households from 2007 to 2015, and the statistical information required by Stata13 software was extracted from raw data of household expenses and income in the Iranian Statistics Center. In this study, the double hurdle approach was used to distinguish between unwillingness to consume and the corner solution, and the coefficients were computed with Stata13 software. The marginal effects obtained for the dual hurdle model were: income (1.8), price (2.6), employment status (1.7), age (-0.5), house ownership status (-2.9), marital status (6.08), educational status (-1.4), presence of children under the age of 14 in the household (1.9), and gender (12.6). The marginal effects of the participation equation for consumption were: employment status (0.28), age (-0.1), house ownership status (0.15), marital status (-0.16), educational status (0.07), presence of children under the age of 14 (0.07), and gender (1.8).All coefficients were significant at the 5% level. The results showed that considering the marginal effects calculated for consumption equation, the effect of demographic factors on smoking was more than economic factors. Therefore, policymakers' attention to employment, marriage and housing of community members can be turned to reducing tobacco use and improving the general health.