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 cause serious smoking abuse among rural migrants in destination cites. Objective: This study aims to address the direct effect of split household on the smoking behavior, while sole migration, couple migration and family migration are incorporated to the explore the concise effect of differentiated split household forms. 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 amounts of rural migrants; Analyses are conducted using the Chi-square tests/ ANOVA tests and multiple Tobit regression. Results: The amounts of cigarettes consumed for the family migrants (0.1751±0.3757) are less than those sole migrants (0.2732±0.4218) and couple migrants (0.1892±0.3745). The couple migrants (Coefficient= -0.0575; 95% CI= -0.1378, 0.022717) and family migrants (Coefficient= -0.1313; 95% CI= -0.2127,-0.0498) smoke less than the sole migrants counterparts, but the coefficient of couple migrants is not significant. Conclusions: Split household is associated with smoking abuse. Family migration has a significant effect on smoking control, while couple migration only produces insignificant negative influence on cigarettes consumption.