Open AccessSmoking Behavior in Low- and High-Income Adults Immediately Following California Proposition 56 Tobacco Tax Increase
Author(s) -
Courtney Keeler,
Wendy Max,
Tingting Yao,
Yingning Wang,
Xueying Zhang,
HaiYen Sung
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
american journal of public health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.284
H-Index - 264
eISSN - 1541-0048
pISSN - 0090-0036
DOI - 10.2105/ajph.2020.305615
Subject(s) - logistic regression , medicine , behavioral risk factor surveillance system , demography , association (psychology) , low income , environmental health , confounding , household income , smoking prevalence , ordered logit , cigarette smoking , psychology , population , geography , archaeology , pathology , sociology , computer science , psychotherapist , machine learning , socioeconomics
Objectives. To compare the association of California Proposition 56 (Prop 56), which increased the cigarette tax by $2 per pack beginning on April 1, 2017, with smoking behavior among low- and high-income adults. Methods. Drawing on a sample of 17 206 low-income and 21 324 high-income adults aged 21 years or older from the 2012 to 2018 California Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data, we explored 2 outcomes: current smoking prevalence and smoking intensity (average number of cigarettes per day among current smokers). For each income group, we estimated a multivariable logistic regression to analyze the association of Prop 56 with smoking prevalence and a multivariable linear regression to analyze the association of Prop 56 with smoking intensity. Results. Although we observed no association between smoking intensity and Prop 56, we found a statistically significant decline in smoking prevalence among low-income adults following Prop 56. No such association was found among the high-income group. Conclusions. Given that low-income Californians smoke cigarettes at greater rates than those with higher incomes, our results provide evidence that Prop 56 is likely to reduce income disparities in cigarette smoking in California.