Quitting tobacco could give economic boost to 20.5 mn households in India

New Delhi, April 21: An analysis has estimated that quitting tobacco could help 11.5 per cent or 20.5 million households in India move up one economic class, with rural areas and the poorest households possibly seeing the greatest impact.
Seven million middle-income families may also stand to benefit from quitting tobacco, the estimates published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) Global Health suggest. Researchers, including those from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, and Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)-National Institute of Cancer Prevention and Research (NICPR) in Noida, said the findings show the direct economic benefits of tobacco cessation and that tobacco control needs to be integrated with poverty reduction strategies through increased taxation, cessation support programmes and awareness campaigns.
The team added that treatment of tobacco-related disease and productivity subsequently lost due to illness and premature death add up to global economic losses of more than USD one trillion every year — money spent on tobacco means less for essentials, including food and education.
Around 80 per cent of tobacco users live in low and middle income countries, where a significant proportion of household income is spent on tobacco products, they said.
The analysis looked at over 261,000 households from the Indian National Sample Survey (NSS) 2022-23 Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES), to quantify the long-term economic benefits of quitting tobacco for households in the countries and estimate how many families could therefore be lifted out of poverty.
Consumption of tobacco products, including bidis, cigarettes and gutka, was recorded for seven-day periods and monthly household expenditure was estimated.
The poorest households were noted to allocate the highest monthly expenditure per head to tobacco (6.4 per cent), as were households in rural areas (6.6 per cent).
Further, the proportion of a household’s spend on tobacco was found to fall with increasing income — 4.4 per cent in poorer households, 3.6 per cent in middle income households, 2.8 per cent in richer households and two per cent in the richest.
“Tobacco cessation could uplift 20.49 million households (10.6 per cent) to higher economic classes, with (a) greater impact in rural areas (11.64 per cent; 17 million) against urban regions (7.26 per cent; 3.5 million),” the authors wrote.
“Among the poorest households, 12.4 per cent (5.62 million) could improve their economic status, enabling spending on essential needs. Middle-income households demonstrate substantial upward mobility potential (16.8 per cent; 7.1 million),” they said.
Acknowledging the study’s limitations, the researchers said the study is an observational one and that money not spent on tobacco may not necessarily mean that it would be spent on essentials.
They said nevertheless, tobacco consumption functions as a significant barrier to economic advancement for millions of households and that support for quitting tobacco should not be considered as only a health intervention but also as a poverty reduction strategy. (PTI)