Exploring the intergenerational persistence of health behaviour: an empirical study of smoking from China

BMC Public Health

Table 2 Descriptive statistics of variables

Variables	Total sample (1)	Smoking sample (2)	Non-smoking sample (3)
Smoking (=1)	0.030	1.000	0.000
Number of cigarettes smoked per day	0.254	8.346	-
Mother smoker (=1)	0.025	0.053	0.024***
Father smoker (=1)	0.715	0.902	0.709***
Number of cigarettes mother smoked per day	0.226	0.511	0.217*
Number of cigarettes father smoked per day	11.665	14.541	11.574***
Age	15.508	16.784	15.468***
Female (=1)	0.484	0.015	0.499***
Living in rural area (=1)	0.714	0.722	0.714
Mother’s age	42.237	43.679	42.191***
Father’s age	43.988	46.189	43.919***
Father’s education year	7.640	6.391	7.679***
Mother’s education year	5.729	4.887	5.755***
Mother’s employment type
Unemployed	0.171	0.165	0.171
Farmer	0.113	0.143	0.112
Collective owned enterprises	0.470	0.519	0.468
Private or foreign enterprises	0.063	0.053	0.063
Government or state owned	0.160	0.075	0.162***
Other employment	0.010	0.015	0.010
Father’s employment type
Unemployed	0.083	0.113	0.082
Farmer	0.103	0.135	0.102
Collective owned enterprises	0.432	0.459	0.431
Private or foreign enterprises	0.103	0.090	0.103
Government or state owned enterprises	0.253	0.135	0.256***
Other employment	0.011	0.023	0.011
Annual household income per capita	4464.620	4089.133	4476.412
N	4368	133	4235

Note: (1) The statistics reported are the sample mean. (2) Asterisks (***) denote statistically significant difference between the urban and rural groups (at 5% level). (3) The annual household per capita income is measured in 2009 yuan and is calculated by dividing the total household income by number of people in the family (parents and adolescents)

ISSN: 1471-2458