Migration and the Initiation of Cigarette Smoking among Chinese Adults: Evidence from Event History Analysis

Shige Song, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Jingjun Qiu, Capital Medical University (CMU)

Medical research has revealed that smoking is a manifestation of nicotine addiction. Empirical evidence from across the world has documented that social factors are much stronger sources of variation in smoking than are genetic factors. In general low SES people are more likely to smoke and are more likely to begin early. However, the Chinese case may be distinctive, with the SES gradient much weaker than elsewhere and migrants, who are generally low status people, less rather than more likely than non-migrants to smoke. Using data from a just completed national probability sample survey in China, we conduct event history analysis on the effect of migration on the initiation of smoking. We aim to answer the following research questions: (1) Is smoking more prevalent among migrants than non-migrants when confounders are controlled? (2) Does migration lead to early initiation? (3) What are the causal pathways that link migration to smoking?