Differences by education in smoker/non-smoker beliefs about the dangers of smoking

Abstract

Surveys consistently demonstrate that smokers are less likely than non-smokers to acknowledge the health hazards of cigarette smoking. Similarly, compared with high education individuals, persons with lower educational attainment are less likely to acknowledge smoking's dangers. We find, however, that as education level rises, smokers' acceptance of the dangers of smoking rises significantly less than does the acceptance by non-smokers. Thus, relative to non-smokers with the same educational attainment, high-education smokers are less likely to acknowledge the hazards of smoking than are smokers with lower levels of education.