Use of Tobacco in India and the Influencing Factors: An Analysis on National Family and Health Survey Data (NFHS-III)

Objective: In the present study an attempt has been made to study the use of tobacco and the social, economic and the environmental factors that influence it. Method of the solution: The data are cross tabulated and chisquare test and Multinomial logistic regression are used for the analysis of the data. Factor analysis is used to identify group of variables that share the variance to reduce the number of factors and multi-dimensional scaling is used to visualize high dimensional data in to considerably low dimensions. Principal findings: In India smokeless tobacco consumption dominates the smoke tobacco products. Consumption of all types of the tobacco products (smoke and smokeless) is considerably large in rural than to the urban and in the age between 30-49.There exists association between highest education level and consumption of the tobacco products hence indicating the uneducated are more prone to this habit. Chewing of paan masala is almost equally seen in even educated and uneducated people. Hindus being largest population of India stays in the top in consumption of all tobacco products and Muslims being the second largest population has more number of the paan masala and the ghutka consumers than to the Christians. The most of poorest and the poorer are the users of all types of the tobacco and most of the middle wealth indexed people are paan masala chewers. Respondent’s occupation is also associated with the consumption of tobacco where the most of the not-working and agricultural employees addicted to tobacco products. More number of people who are never married and currently married has the habit of smoking of all tobacco products. Regular newspaper /magazines readers and television viewers have lower likelihood of tobacco use whereas going to cinema once in a month has negative impact on smoking of cigarettes/bidis.