Belvin, C., Britton, J., Holmes, J. et al. (1 more author) (2015) Parental smoking and child poverty in the UK: an analysis of national survey data. BMC Public Health, 15. 507.
Abstract
BACKGROUND: In 2011/12 approximately 2.3 million children, 17% of children in the UK, were estimated to be in relative poverty. Cigarette smoking is expensive and places an additional burden on household budgets, and is strongly associated with socioeconomic deprivation. The aim of this study was to provide an illustrative first estimate of the extent to which parental smoking exacerbates child poverty in the UK. METHODS: Findings from the 2012 Households Below Average Income report and the 2012 Opinions and Lifestyle Survey were combined to estimate the number of children living in poor households containing smokers; the expenditure of typical smokers in these households on tobacco; and the numbers of children drawn into poverty if expenditure on smoking is subtracted from household income. RESULTS: 1.1 million children - almost half of all children in poverty - were estimated to be living in poverty with at least one parent who smokes; and a further 400,000 would be classed as being in poverty if parental tobacco expenditure were subtracted from household income. CONCLUSIONS: Smoking exacerbates poverty for a large proportion of children in the UK. Tobacco control interventions which effectively enable low income smokers to quit can play an important role in reducing the financial burden of child poverty.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2015 Belvin et al.; licensee BioMed Central. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health (Sheffield) > School of Health and Related Research (Sheffield) > ScHARR - Sheffield Centre for Health and Related Research |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 10 Jun 2015 11:24 |
Last Modified: | 15 Nov 2016 17:03 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-015-1797-z |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | BioMed Central |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1186/s12889-015-1797-z |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:86849 |