© 2005 American Public Health Association DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2004.056895
Fred C. Pampel is with the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to Fred C. Pampel, 484 UCB, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 803090484 (e-mail: fred.pampel{at}colorado.edu).
Objectives. I examined demographic and socioeconomic patterns of tobacco use in 2 African nations in the early stages of epidemic. Methods. I used population-based data from the Demographic Health Surveys of men aged 1559 years (N=5111) and women aged 1549 years (N=20809) in Malawi (2000) and Zambia (2001/2002) and multinomial logistic regression models to examine tobacco use (nonsmoker, light cigarette smoker, heavy cigarette smoker, and user of other tobacco) as a function of age, residence, education, occupation, marital status, and religion. Results. Male tobacco users tend to be less educated, urban, household service or manual workers, formerly married, and non-Christian and non-Muslim. Although tobacco use is less common among women, it relates inversely to their education and occupational status. Tobacco users more often reported drinking, getting drunk, and, among men, paying for sex. Conclusions. Tobacco use patterns in 2 African nations at the early stages of epidemic suggest the need for public health officials to focus on disadvantaged groups to prevent the worldwide spread of tobacco.
As tobacco use has declined in high-income, more-developed countries, increased attention has turned to its growth in middle- and low-income, less-developed countries.1,2 Despite facing higher taxes, judicial setbacks, negative publicity, legislative restrictions, and a declining market in the United States and Western Europe, the tobacco industry has maintained its profitabilityand its ability to promote the use of tobaccowith global sales and marketing.3,4 Calls for global public health efforts against tobacco have, as yet, had limited effect on the global spread of cigarettes,5 although future ratification of an international treaty for consistent antitobacco policies around the world has the potential to do more.6,7 A few figures illustrate the global patterns of change. From 1970 to 1990, cigarettes consumed per adult aged 15 years and older fell by 9% in more-developed countries and rose by 64% in less-developed countries.8 By 1995, the prevalence of cigarette use had surprisingly reached equality across the 2 groups of nations29% of adults in less-developed countries and 30% in more-developed countriesbut these figures hide gender diversity.2 Whereas male prevalence reached 49% in less-developed countriesactually higher than in more-developed countriesfemale prevalence was only 9%. More so than for men, the use of cigarettes among women in less-developed countries may enter a growth phase. A projection of recent trends suggests that smoking by women in less-developed countries will rise to 20% by 2025.9 Largely as a result of the growth in less-developed countries, the 1.3 billion smokers throughout the world today may rise to 1.6 billion by 2025.2 Although smoking-related deaths currently number approximately 4.8 million per year, just less than half now occur in developing countries.10 However, projections indicate that smoking-related deaths may rise from approximately 6% of all deaths in 1990 to 12% in 2020,11 of which 70% will occur in less-developed countries. These trends make smoking and other tobacco use in less-developed countries an important topic of study. To combat rising prevalence of tobacco use, the underlying sources of the problem must be understood and its social distribution must be described.1214 Despite comparative studies across high-income nations15 and substantial progress in reducing the prevalence of the habit,16 less knowledge exists about and less progress has been made in fighting tobacco use in less-developed countries.17 As international organizations such as the World Health Organization and World Bank have done in recent decades,2,8,18,19 researchers need to direct further attention to the emergence of this health and social problem where it is less well understoodin the developing world.20,21 Along with public health and policy concerns, patterns of tobacco use in less-developed countries raise important questions about the nature of social differences in this health behavior. Which demographic and socioeconomic status (SES) groups are most vulnerable to tobacco use? Do social patterns of tobacco use in less-developed countries mirror past patterns in more-developed countries, or do they differ? Such questions have particular relevance to African nations. First, the sub-Saharan African nations are in many ways understudied with regard to tobacco use (and no doubt with regard to other aspects of social life and health). Second, because most African nations have reached only low levels of tobacco use, they allow for study of the early stages of the epidemic. Third, the study of nations at the early stages of the spread of tobacco use allows public health officials to intervene before the problem peaks. Given the low levels of tobacco use in most African nations today, the health consequences may not appear serious, particularly when deaths from AIDS, starvation, and violence more immediately threaten the health of citizens.22,23 Still, tobacco use may, in future decades, contribute substantially to mortality and may blunt improvements in longevity from other sources.24 The sooner that programs can address the problem, the more they can do to stop the spread of tobacco. I used population-based survey data to examine the relationships of demographic and SES variables with tobacco use among men and women in 2 African nations in 20002002. Such data are rarely available in this region and improve on studies using samples from single provinces, cities, or hospitals or data based on aggregated population averages.
Data The Demographic Health Surveys (DHSs) for 2 African nationsMalawi (2000) and Zambia (2001/2002)provided the data for the analyses.25 The DHS is designed to provide reliable and nationally representative data on the fertility, family planning, health, and nutrition of populations in developing nations. Since the mid-1980s, approximately 200 surveys have been conducted in 70 countries across the world. The most recent surveys (named MEASURE DHS+) have been carried out by national statistical offices with funding from the US Agency for International Development and with financial and technical assistance from ORC Macro of Calverton, Md, and Johns Hopkins University.26 The surveys select nationally representative samples that appropriately include rural as well as urban residents and low-SES groups as well as high-SES groups. However, given the focus on human reproductive health, most surveys either include only women or do not ask questions about tobacco use. The Malawi and Zambia surveys meet the requirements of surveying both adult men and women and obtaining information on tobacco use but otherwise follow the MEASURE DHS+ sample design.27,28 A stratified, 2-stage cluster design over-samples low-populated provinces, identifies clusters within provinces, and chooses households randomly within clusters. For sampled households, 1 member answers questions about the household in general and provides a list of household residents. Then, all women aged 1549 years in the household are interviewed, and all men aged 1559 years are interviewed in approximately every third household. Interviews of household representatives were completed for more than 98% of selected households in both Malawi and Zambia. Response rates were a bit lower for household members. In Zambia, interviews of adult men were completed for 88.7% of those eligible, and interviews of adult women were completed for 96.4% of those eligible. In Malawi, interviews of adult men were completed for 91.6% of those eligible, and interviews of adult women were completed for 97.7% of those eligible. Interviewers received training and guidance in identifying and interviewing sample respondents, and supervisors followed guidelines to ensure quality control, to minimize nonresponse, and to monitor interviewers.29 Few respondents refused to participate; the major source of nonparticipation instead came from difficulties in contacting men in urban households who were often absent from the home. Excluding cases with missing values on the variables to be analyzed, the samples sizes were 2130 for men and 7614 for women in Zambia and 2981 for men and 13 195 for women in Malawi. The age ranges of the sampleslimited to women aged 1549 years and men aged 1559 years because the DHS is designed to study fertilityproved suitable for the study of tobacco use. Because long-term tobacco use brings the greatest harm to health, samples of young and middle-aged persons capture groups of special importance for public health efforts. In addition, because the higher mortality rate of smokers after age 50 leads to understatement of the prevalence, samples of young and middle-aged persons help avoid this source of selection bias.
Variables I examined the association of tobacco use with the following SES and demographic variables. Education measures 1 component of SES and was reported as the highest year of completed formal schooling; it ranged from 0 to 18. The other component of SES, occupation, included (1) not working (reference category); (2) agricultural self-employed workers and employees; (3) household, domestic, and service workers; (4) skilled and unskilled manual workers; and (5) professionals, technicians, managers, and clerical and sales workers. In abbreviated form, these categories are referred to as not working, agriculture, service, manual, and nonmanual. Not all these categories can be ranked unambiguously in terms of SES, but nonmanual work most likely represents high SES. Among the demographic variables, age ranged from 15 to 49 years for women and 15 to 59 years for men. Residence was reported as 1 for those living in cities (urban) and 0 otherwise (rural). Currently married and formerly married defined dummy variables, with never-married as the reference category. Finally, religion included (1) Catholic (reference category), (2) Protestant, (3) Muslim, and (4) other. All these variables were included in the multivariate analyses. Polynomial tests for nonlinearity in the effects of age and education revealed deviations from linearity only for age among males; the use of the natural log of age improved on the linear term and was used in the male equations. Tobacco use may be associated in non-causal ways with other health-related lifestyle behaviors. The lifestyle variables included the number of days in the past 3 months that the respondent drank alcohol, whether the respondent got drunk anytime in the past 3 months (coded 1 and 0), and (asked to men only) whether the respondent ever paid for sex (coded 1 and 0). Associations of these variables with tobacco use may identify a more general pattern of some respondents to engage in unhealthy behavior.
Statistical Analyses Given the stratified 2-stage cluster design, I used sample weights for all the analyses and adjusted for cluster membership in estimating standard errors in the multinomial logistic regressions.32 The multinomial logistic regression tables present odds ratios or the multiplicative change in the odds of belonging to a category relative to belonging to the baseline category of nontobacco users associated with a 1-unit increase in the independent variables. Separate multinomial logistic regression models are presented here for the relationships between tobacco use and lifestyle variables both with and without controlling for the SES and demographic variables (again adjusting for sample weights and cluster membership).
Table 1
Table 2
Table 3
Table 4
My analysis of the data from the DHSs in 2 African nations showed that cigarettes are used most in urban areas, other forms of tobacco are used most in rural areas, and all forms of tobacco are used most by men. In addition, education has clear negative relationships with tobacco use in any form for both genders. Although occupation is less consistent than education in its influence, higher-SES nonmanual workers tend to smoke less than lower-SES workers in manual and household service jobs. In addition, tobacco use has modest associations with alcohol use and non-Christian or non-Islamic religion. The population-based estimates of smoking prevalence in Malawi and Zambia sometimes differ from those reported by other sources. The Tobacco Control Country Profiles reported adult smoking prevalence of men and women to be 20% and 9%, respectively, in Malawi and 40% and 7%, respectively, in Zambia.33 The Atlas of Heart Disease and Stroke reported percentages of 31% and 7% for Malawi and 21% and 9% for Zambia for men and women, respectively.34 The cigarette-use figures obtained from the DHS (1618% for men and 1% for women) fall below those reported elsewhere. Perhaps respondents in the DHS were not forthcoming about their use of tobacco or the limited age ranges hid cigarette use among those younger than 15 years. More likely, however, the representative sample better reflects actual usage. Otherwise, the multivariate results concerning SES differences in tobacco use in Malawi and Zambia confirm findings reported for Uganda and South Africa34 and many non-African nations.35 Despite their similarity in the prevalence and determinants of smoking, the 2 nations differ in social and economic context. Malawi, one of the most impoverished nations in the world, has an economy that depends substantially on tobacco exports.36 Perhaps because government officials benefit from the tobacco economy and viable export alternatives have not been developed, Malawi lacks regulations or restrictions on tobacco use.33 Zambia has a higher national income than Malawi and more regulations on the purchase of tobacco by youth, smoking in public buildings, and the use of warning labels on cigarette packages.33 However, neither country has signed the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. The greater use of tobacco by low-SES groups in these nations contrasts with the experiences of most developed nations, where tobacco use emerged earliest among high-SES groups, but eventually the relationship reversed and became negative.3739 Tobacco use in Malawi and Zambia instead appears to have begun with low-SES groups rather than diffusing to them after adoption by high-SES groups. The cross-sectional surveys do not provide data for previous decades, but given the low levels and early stage of cigarette use, it appears unlikely that a major reversal in SES patterns has occurred. Moreover, additional analyses not included in the tables compared results for younger men (aged 1529 years) with those of older men (aged 3059 years) who likely began smoking in earlier decades. These results showed negative relationships of education with smoking for both age groups. Thus, the historical pattern of tobacco diffusion in high-income nations at advanced stages of the tobacco epidemic likely does not provide a model to understand the experiences of these low-income African nations today. Low-SES groups in low-income nations may lack either the knowledge of the harm of tobacco use or confidence in the claims that tobacco use harms health. Even if less-educated people accept the harm of tobacco use, they may perceive implicitly that, because other risks tend to result in premature death, they have little to lose from tobacco use.40 Like the use of alcohol, the use of tobacco may provide a short-term pleasure or form of self-medication to deal with difficult circumstances.41 In addition, despite their inability to afford most consumer products used in affluent nations, low-SES groups in middle-and low-income nations (other than the most destitute) can often afford 1 Western productcigarettes. During recent decades of globalization and trade liberalization, penetration of markets by multinational tobacco corporations has led to price cuts, widespread advertising, escalating competition for sales, and the promotion of positive images of smokers.42,43 Public health officials dealing with tobacco use in low-income nations, much like those in high-income nations, need to focus on disadvantaged groups. However, efforts to target these groups confront special problems in developing nations. The poor face a variety of problems that may pose more immediate threats to health than tobacco usemalnutrition, violence, AIDS, other infectious diseases. Without changes in tobacco use, however, the long-term benefits of other public health improvements may be limited. With the adoption of tobacco use by lower-status groups, price increases, along with government restrictions, could do much to limit tobacco use in these nations.2 Because low-income groups are generally responsive to price increases, tobacco taxes may be particularly effective in reducing tobacco use in low-income nations such as Malawi and Zambia, particularly when combined with limitations on marketing and advertising of tobacco products. If raising prices limits tobacco use, it also could prevent the diversion of limited funds of poor families away from food, education, and health care. Although the DHS has the advantage of representative samples and comparable questions, it suffers from a lack of detail on tobacco use. The 2001 Global Youth Tobacco Survey of 13- to 15-year-olds in 2 major cities of Malawi revealed early initiation; 22.3% and 28.6% of the boys and 7.8% and 10.1% of the girls had ever used cigarettes.44 Measures of the ages of starting in surveys of adults would help identify the point of highest risk for initiation of tobacco use and measures of cessation would help identify the source of current prevalence. Such data would be most useful if it were available for other developing nations at the early stages of the tobacco epidemic. Malawi and Zambia, while offering valuable insight into patterns of tobacco use, are by no means representative of the continent. Still further, validation studies of self-reported tobacco use in developing countries are needed. The DHS cross-sectional data also limit causal inferences. Questions on work, religion, residence, and marital status measure current characteristics rather than those at the time a person begins to smoke. Current characteristics affect the propensity for current smokers to continue but otherwise affect past tobacco use only if they reflect, at least to some extent, the characteristics at the time of earlier initiation or cessation. To the extent that the characteristics change, it may attenuate contemporaneous relationships. Longitudinal data on tobacco use over the life course would provide more reliable causal inferences, but these data are rarely available in developing nations.
This work was supported by a grant to the Population Aging Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder, from the National Institute on Aging (grant AG 017248). I thank Jane Menken, Rick Rogers, and anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier versions of the article.
Peer Reviewed
Human Participant Protection Accepted for publication January 14, 2005.
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