Split household and smoking behavior of rural migrants in China

Abstract Background: With Hukou constraints, a large proportion of rural migrants have to leave part of their family members stay at hometown, the split household may induce smoking behavior among rural migrants in destination cites.Objective: This study aims to address association between split household and smoking behavior, while the main discussion is to explore the differences between the three forms of split households---involving sole migration, couple migration, and family migration.Method: A unique and comprehensive database named Rural Urban Migration in China (RUMiC-2009) is applied to explore the association between split household and the smoking behavior; Analyses are conducted using the Chi-square tests and Logit regression.Results: The prevalence of smoking among family migrants (23.54%) is less than those sole migrants (25.46%) and couple migrants (35.13%). The family migrants (OR= 0.7445; 95% CI= 0.5955, 0.930) and couple migrants (OR= 0.8785; 95% CI= 0.6939, 1.1121) are less prone to smoke than the sole migrants counterparts. The family migrants (Coefficient= -0.0787; CI= -0.1229,-0.0346) and couple migrants (Coefficient= -0.0726; CI= -0.1188,-0.0264) show lower lever of depression compared with the sole migration groups.Conclusions: Split household is positively associated with the smoking behavior of rural migrants. While the depression may play as the potential transmission channel linked the spit household and smoking prevalence.