That raises an important question. How is smoking behavior transmitted through a population and why does it differ from one country to another? Today, we get an answer thanks to the work of John Lang at the University of Waterloo in Canada and a couple of pals. These guys have gathered the largest historical data set on smoking ever compiled and study how its prevalence is correlated with the types of societies involved. Finally, they create a mathematical model of how smoking behavior is transmitted through a society. Treating smoking like an epidemic in this way finally reveals what’s going on. They say their results can explain the rate of change of smoking in various industrialized countries. And they say the crucial difference is the level of individualism in each society. Perhaps the most extreme difference in smoking patterns come from the U.S. and Sweden (see graphic above). In 1920, a relatively small portion of both populations smoked, less than 10 percent. In the U.S. this proportion rose dramatically to just under 40 percent of the population in 1965 and then fell to just under 20 percent in 2010. By contrast, in Sweden the number of smokers peaked at around 30 percent in the early ’70s and then declined to around 20 percent in 2010. So the Swedes adopted smoking more slowly, peaked later, and then stopped smoking at a slower rate than people in America. And yet the Swedes had access to the same data about the dangers of smoking at more or less the same time. One crucial difference between Swedish and American society is the level of individualism. This is essentially the emphasis on the worth of the individual as opposed to the emphasis on the interdependence of individuals: individualism versus collectivism.
Posted on: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 09:10:52 +0000
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