The effect of the presence of children on adult smoking behaviour: empirical evidence based on China family panel studies

BACKGROUND: Despite a number of studies linking family and marriage factors with health behaviour, the effects of children on the health behaviour of parents are still understudied. This study explored the association between the presence of children and adults’ smoking behaviours. METHODS: This study used panel data from the China Family Panel Studies 2010 and 2012, and the data set included 23,157 households and 45,513 adults. Logistic regression was performed to analyse the association of the presence of children on adults’ smoking behaviours. Subgroup regression was used to examine heterogeneous effects. RESULTS: Full sample regressions showed that the number of children was significantly inversely associated with smoking behaviour (OR = 0.93; 95% 0.90–0.96). Further subsample regression finds that such effect is only significant among the high-education group (OR = 0.92; 95% 0.87–0.97), high-skill workers (OR = 0.89; 95% 0.80–0.99) and couples who had an age gap greater than 2 years (OR = 0.91; 95% 0.88–0.95). CONCLUSIONS: Our findings confirm the existence of the upward intergenerational effect of the presence of children on adults’ smoking behaviour in China. However, such effects are not equal across all demographic characteristics. Future research could explore other parts of the upward mechanism and possible pathways for a stronger effect. In resource-poor areas, targeting cessation activities at those who have children at an early age may be an effective strategy.