The Determinants of Smoking and Drinking among Filipino Youth by Gerard Russo, Lita Domingo, and Midea Kabamalan. East-West Center Working Papers, Population and Health Series, No. 103. September 1999. 59 pp.

Abstract

Using data from the 1994 Young Adult Fertility Survey (YAFS-II), we analyze cigarette smoking, and alcohol beverage consumption by young adults aged 15-24 years in the Philippines. We specify the probability that a youth will smoke or drink as functions of the individuals' age, sex, education, marital status and religion while controlling for region and urbanity of household residence. Other family and household characteristics, including father's educational attainment and mother's educational attainment, were found to be statistically insignificant and are excluded from the analysis. We use probit analysis to estimate these relations. Because the estimated effects and probabilities are nonlinear functions of the independent variables involving all the parameters of the model, we compute the approximate standard errors using a first-order Taylor series. Our results indicate socioeconomic and demographic differences in these behaviors.

In particular, statistically significant probability estimates indicate that smoking is negatively related to education, where smoking is defined as smoking regularly or occasionally. Among males aged 20-24, college graduates are approximately half as likely to smoke as individuals in the three lowest educational attainment categories-some high school (0.70 vs. 0.37), elementary graduates (0.70 vs. 0.37), and some elementary school or less (0.66 vs. 0.37)-ceteris paribus. The self-reported smoking prevalence among males is roughly ten to twelve times greater than the smoking rates of females. Nevertheless, among females aged 20-24, education still exhibits a negative impact on smoking prevalence with the most highly educated women smoking at approximately half the rate of females with only an elementary education (0.06 vs. 0.03) or with some high school (0.06 vs. 0.03).

Drinking, particularly occasional drinking, is a more common behavior and more uniform across levels of educational attainment. Consequently, the results tend to be insignificant. However, regular drinking exhibits a negative relation with education among males aged 20-24. Those who have attained a college or advanced degree are roughly one-third to one-fourth as likely to drink regularly as individuals with some college (0.11 vs. 0.04), high school graduates (0.12 vs. 0.04), some high school (0.18 vs. 0.04), elementary graduates (0.12 vs. 0.04), and some elementary education or less (0.16 vs. 0.04).

Self-reported smoking among males surveyed increases rapidly with age. Among male respondents aged 15 years only 2.7% report regular smoking while the regular-smoking prevalence among males aged 24 years is 38.4%. Self-reported regular smoking among females is considerably less with 0.0% smoking regularly at age 15 rising to 2.5% by age 24. If the smoking behavior of this male cohort is sustained, the Philippines can expect high mortality and morbidity for this segment of the male population when these individuals reach middle-age. Overall, the survey results indicate that smoking and drinking, particularly on a regular basis, is not a common risk behavior among females.