Smoking kills--in India, too
MPRC faculty associate Sonalde Desai published a piece in the Indian newspaper The Hindu with her colleague Debasis Barik, giving the results of a recent study on the relationship between smoking and mortality in India. 41,554 households were surveyed in 2004-2005 and again in 2011-2012. Of those surveyed in the initial interview, 26 percent of men and 1.6 percent of women over the age of 15 smoked. At the time of the second interview, seven years later, daily smokers were 1.14 times more likely to have died than those who smoked only occasionally or not at all.
“The results unambiguously show that even after we take into account individuals’ age, gender, education and household wealth, those who are reported to be daily smokers are more likely to die,” write Desai and Barik. “The results we show above should lay to rest the argument that Indians are not somehow immune to health consequences of smoking that beset non-Indian populations.”