Share of adults who smoke daily

This week we take a look at the share of adults who smoke daily. 

Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable disease, disability and death, accounting for more than 480,000 deaths every year in the US alone. 

Interesting findings from this project: 

• There is a vast disparity between men and women smokers in China. As it turns out, in Chinese culture, women who smoke are considered degenerate and immoral and thus it is not socially acceptable for a women to smoke. You can read more about this trend in Susan Rosegrant's article  aptly titled The surprising truth about women smokers in China.
• Sweden is the only country in the world in which women smoke more than men. That may have something to do with snus, the Swedish alternative way of consuming smokeless tobacco, which 22% of men and 4% of women use daily.  

Sources:

1. For China, I used the results of the 2018 Global Adults Tobacco Survey (GATS).
2. For EU Countries and Turkey I used Eurostat's 2014-2019 Daily smokers of cigarettes by sex, age and educational attainment level.
3. For Russia I used the results of 2016 GATS.
4. For India I used the results of 2016-2017 GATS.
5. For Israel I used  Israel's Ministry of Health data.
6. For the UK I used ONS' results on Adult smoking habits in the UK: 2019.
7. For Canada I used Statcan's 2019 Health Fact Sheet on Smoking.
8. For the US I used CDC's 2019 Current Cigarette Smoking Among Adults in the United States.
9. For Brazil I used INCA's 2013 Data and smoking numbers.
10. For Australia I used AIHW's 2019 report.

P.S. When I started researching for this post, I came across OurWorldinData's report on the matter who lists the Global Health Observatory Data Repository - World Health Organization as the source. The data on WHO's website and on Eurostat where vastly different, since the team of OurWorldinData considers any form of tobacco consumption as "smoking".

Data used:

Country	Prevalence of Smoking, females (% of female adults)	Prevalence of Smoking, males (% of male adults)
China	1.6	44.4
Russia	11.3	43.9
Turkey	14.4	40.6
Greece	17.9	29.9
Israel	12.6	27.3
Germany	18.6	25.4
France	15.4	20.5
Italy	12.7	20.5
Canada	12.3	17.3
United Kingdom	12.5	15.9
United States	12.7	15.3
India	1.7	15.2
Australia	10.4	12.8
Brazil	7.3	12.7
Sweden	6.8	5.9