Smoking disparities by level of educational attainment in the United States, 1966 to 2015

Abstract

Background: Previous studies in the U.S. show higher smoking rates among those with lower levels of education attainment. Less is known about how these smoking patterns vary by birth cohort or how they may be driven by different demographic profiles across education groups. Furthermore, limited attention has been given to differences in smoking behaviors between those with less than a high school degree and those with 8th grade education or less. Method(s): Data from the National Health Interview Survey 1966- 2015 were utilized to obtain smoking-related information for U.S. adults aged 25 years or older. We developed age-period-cohort models with constrained natural splines to estimate smoking prevalence in groups categorized with five education levels: