Elsevier

Preventive Medicine

Volume 52, Issue 2, 1 February 2011, Pages 182-183
Preventive Medicine

Letter to the Editor
Smoking in Italy 2008–2009: A rise in prevalence related to the economic crisis?

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Acknowledgments

This work was conducted with the contribution of the Italian Ministry of Health, the Italian League Against Cancer and the Italian Association for Cancer Research (AIRC). IT was supported by a fellowship from the Italian Foundation for Cancer Research (FIRC).

References (16)

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    Thus, although the acute phase of economic downturns can be associated with rising alcoholic beverage consumption (Gili et al., 2013; Mattei et al., 2014; Colell et al., 2015), a longer phase of income reduction caused by the economic downturn lowers alcohol consumption among the population, as previously found in Mattei et al. (2017). Estimates indicate that smoking significantly increases during economic downturns, contrary to Rhum’s (2005) US-based findings and consistent with the recent Italian-based results by Gallus et al. (2011) and Mattei et al. (2017). The latter record an increase in smoking prevalence among the Italian population after the 2008 economic crisis.

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    Economic crisis may affect smoking behavior, but current research provides discrepant results. In the last decades of XX century in the US, periods of economic recessions led to a decrease in the smoking prevalence (Ruhm, 2005) whilst in Italy the smoking prevalence increased in 2009 compared with 2008 possibly due to the economic crisis (Gallus et al., 2011). Some population groups (i.e., poor, young people) may react in two different ways to economical crisis.

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    On the one hand, evidence from studies conducted prior to the 2008 global economic crisis, mainly based on routine economic cycles, suggested a pro-cyclical relationship with smoking (the crisis decreases smoking consumption), possibly explained by reduced affordability of tobacco products in hard times.7–12 On the other hand, some of the most recent studies based on ex-post analysis of smoking behaviour after the 2008 financial crisis reported a null or even a counter-cyclical relationship (the crisis increased tobacco smoking), possibly explained by an increased psychological stress in selected vulnerable populations.13–20 In the UK, for instance, the attempt rates for smoking cessation steadily declined after the onset of the economic crisis.21

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