Tobacco smoking

"In this paper we employed the OLS technique to examine the affordability elasticity of cigarette demand from 2001 to 2014 for 64 countries worldwide. The trend in cigarette affordability, nominal/real cigarette prices, and per capita cigarette consumption were also explored and presented. We further stratified the analysis by country category. The results clearly show that per capita cigarette consumption was negatively associated with cigarette affordability, indicating that smokers consumed less cigarettes as cigarettes became less affordable. The affordability elasticity of demand differed significantly between HICs and LMICs. However, the effect of cigarette affordability on consumption had not changed over time. Cigarettes have been more affordable in low- and lower middle-income economies and less affordable in upper middle- and high-income countries during the study period. The real cigarette prices continued to decline in low- and lower middle-income countries and continued to rise in upper middle- and high-income countries. Echoing with the dramatic decrease of real cigarette prices in low-income countries, the per capita cigarette consumption has been increasing since 2001 in these countries, resulted in serious challenges in tobacco control. To control the smoking epidemic, low- and lower middle-income countries should further increase cigarette prices. The rate of increase in cigarette prices should exceed the rate of economic growth and outpace the inflation rate to make cigarettes less affordable and thereby reducing cigarette use."

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0200665