Professor of Sociology, Criminology, and Demography, Pennsylvania State University, 211 Oswald Tower, University Park, PA 16802, USA.
Professor of Human Development and Family Studies, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.
Addict Behav. 2018 Dec;87:283-289. doi: 10.1016/j.addbeh.2018.06.008. Epub 2018 Jun 12.
We use prospective data from the ongoing British Cohort Study (BCS) and Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) to: 1) document changes in the prevalence of childhood smoking onset; 2) assess whether broad historic shifts in key risk factors, such as maternal education, parental smoking, and peer childhood smoking, explain observed cohort changes in childhood smoking; and 3) evaluate whether inequalities in onset have narrowed or widened during this period. The children in these two studies were born 31 years apart (i.e., BCS in 1970; MCS in 2001), and were followed from infancy through early adolescence (n = 23,506 children). Our outcome variable is child self-reports of smoking (ages 10, 11). Early life risk factors were assessed via parent reports in infancy and age 5. Findings reveal that the odds of childhood smoking were over 12 times greater among children born in 1970 versus 2001. The decline in childhood smoking by cohort was partly explained by increases in maternal education, decreases in mothers' and fathers' smoking, and declines in the number of children whose friends smoked. Results also show that childhood smoking is now more linked to early life disadvantages, as MCS children were especially likely to smoke if their mother had low education or used cigarettes, or if the child had a friend who smoked. Although the prevalence of child and adult smoking has dropped dramatically in the past three decades, policy efforts should focus on the increased social inequality resulting from the concentration of early life cigarette use among disadvantaged children.
我们利用正在进行的英国队列研究（BCS）和千禧年队列研究（MCS）中的前瞻性数据：1）记录儿童吸烟起始率的变化；2）评估关键风险因素（如母亲教育、父母吸烟和同伴儿童吸烟）的广泛历史变化是否可以解释观察到的儿童吸烟队列变化；3）评估在此期间起始不平等是否缩小或扩大。这两项研究中的儿童出生相隔 31 年（即 BCS 于 1970 年；MCS 于 2001 年），从婴儿期到青春期早期进行随访（n=23506 名儿童）。我们的结果变量是儿童自我报告的吸烟情况（年龄 10、11 岁）。通过在婴儿期和 5 岁时进行的父母报告评估早期生活风险因素。研究结果显示，与 2001 年出生的儿童相比，1970 年出生的儿童吸烟的几率高出 12 倍以上。儿童吸烟率随队列下降部分归因于母亲教育的增加、母亲和父亲吸烟的减少，以及吸烟的朋友数量的减少。研究结果还表明，儿童吸烟现在与早期生活劣势的联系更加紧密，因为如果 MCS 儿童的母亲受教育程度低或吸烟，或者孩子有吸烟的朋友，他们尤其可能吸烟。尽管过去三十年来儿童和成人吸烟的流行率急剧下降，但政策努力应侧重于由于劣势儿童集中使用早期生活香烟而导致的社会不平等加剧。
