The New Core is hard core on smoking

MAP: "Who Smokes?," sourced from "The Tobacco Atlas," Newsweek, 2-9 July 2007, p. 57.

General impression of map is Bell curve of smoking as you go from Gap (mostly at 20-30 percent) to New Core (BRIC plus East Europe all in the 30-40 percent range) to Old Core (mostly 10-20 percent).

Pretty close to developmental fit: all the New Core (and some rising Gap) hit the highest rates of smoking.

What does that tell us?

You get some money and you smoke. Then the development and resulting aging kicks in, and you move to a healthier lifestyle.

Comments

[Michael]

The outliers are interesting, though. Most of the countries with 40% or more smoking rates are hard-core gap: Guinea, Bangladesh, Afganistan, North Korea (how on earth did they get data for that place?) and Yemen. The only exceptions are Serbia, Montenegro (both relatively isolated until recently) and Chile.