The Greek smoking epidemic from a life-course perspective

Smoking rates in Greece are the highest recorded among OECD countries, but the historical and life-course evolution of smoking patterns is largely unknown. The present paper addresses this gap.

We produce nationally representative life-course trajectories of smoking and related mortality of eight generations of Greek men and women. We estimate the smoking-mortality correlation conditional on several confounders and project the estimates forward.

We show that smoking prevalence among Greek men has plateaued at >60% for all but the youngest generation. For women, smoking prevalence is relatively lower, lags by several generations and follows a hump-shaped pattern. Smoking-attributable mortality is currently peaking for men (nearing 40% of total deaths) and is rising for women. We estimate that it takes ~20 years of smoking to maximize the smoking-mortality correlation (at 0.48 for men and 0.32 for women). Based on this estimation, we forecast that mortality rates will begin falling within the current decade.

The breadth of the Greek smoking epidemic has been high by international standards, reflecting the ineffective tobacco control efforts in the country. While smoking popularity fell during the Great Recession, policy vigilance is necessary to prevent a relapse once the economy recovers.