fbpx
Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Smoking and class

The other day in the grocery store parking lot, we saw a mom loading her baby into her new Volvo wagon, then putting groceries into the rear, with a cigarette dangling out of her mouth. It was a startling scene, precisely because it’s so rare. If the woman had been loading another model of car […]

The other day in the grocery store parking lot, we saw a mom loading her baby into her new Volvo wagon, then putting groceries into the rear, with a cigarette dangling out of her mouth. It was a startling scene, precisely because it’s so rare. If the woman had been loading another model of car — one favored by working classes, say — that wouldn’t have been so unusual. But you don’t often see Volvo drivers with smoking habits these days.

I was born in 1967. When I was growing up, smoking was common among adults. Nowadays, it seem like most people who smoke are either under the age of 25, over the age of 60, or working class. Is it just me, or do you notice this too? When did a smoking habit become a class marker? Writing in Newsweek three years ago, Jerry Adler said this isn’t simply anecdotal evidence; smoking has declined overall, but remains persistently high toward the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. Smoking rates are correlated with educational levels. The higher your level of education, the less likely you are to smoke. But it’s definitely not because folks with lower levels of educational attainment don’t know that smoking is bad for them. Everybody knows that now. So what’s the deal?

Why and how did smoking become stigmatized among the middle classes? And why do I see so many middle-class students smoking — and why do they seem to quit after a certain age? Tell me.

Advertisement

Comments

Want to join the conversation?

Subscribe for as little as $5/mo to start commenting on Rod’s blog.

Join Now