Analyzing the Economic and Health of Smoking in Australia

Question: Discuss and Analyzing the Economic and Health of Smoking in Australia. Answer: Introduction: Smoking is a destructive act, destroying the smokers' and passive smokers' health and taking an unfortunate turn in their economic conditions. The financial burden falls on both the government and the individuals. There are many diseases which are preventable yet killed many people were originated from smoking. Smoking not only harms the person who is doing it. The individuals who are being the victims of passive smoking are also sharing the same fate as the smokers. The statistics have shown a significant number of child mortality cases are attached to smoking. Pregnant mothers smoking caused many diseases to their babies and themselves too. Smoking costs the governments of each country a lump sum amount of money. Many countries are trying to fight back to this evil habit of human kind. Australia is leading this fight from the front row. The government of Australia has introduced many policies in order to reduce tobacco consumption in the country. These policies taken have reduced the numbers of smokers significantly. It was seen that the contribution of smoking to hospitalization was significantly higher than illicit drug abuse and alcohol abused, combined. The rate of smoking in the disadvantaged groups of Australia is quite high even after the introductions of the policy measures by the government. The smoking rate among the Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginals double the smoking rate among non-indigenous people. This has caused the disadva ntaged groups of the country more deaths and reduced their life expectancy. The complications during child births also have increased during smoking in the pregnancy periods. The government of Australia has taken several measures to inform the mothers of the disadvantaged groups the effects of smoking on their children and unborn. The results of these efforts are yet to show up. Problem statement: The problem statement in this research work is to determine the impact of smoking on health and economy of the people of the country. Objective of the study The primary objectives of the study are: To investigate the economic and health effect of smoking both on individual and government and then provide a comprehensive analysis to discourage or quit smoking. To explore the impact of smoking on life expectancy on the smokers and non-smokers To examine the various government policies to reduce smoking and its effect since implementation. The main research questions asked in this survey are: Does smoking have any effect on economy and health in Australia? Is there any government policy that discourages smoking? What are the main effects of smoking on mortality rates? What is the functional relationship between smoking and health and economy? Significance: The study is to determine the impact of smoking o health and economy of Australia. The smoking is one of the major health issues in todays world. Smoking is prevalent among youngsters as well as older people. The study will help to determine new policies for the policy makers regarding smoking habit. The mortality rate of the country is increasing in arithmetic progression. The research will help the government officials, policy makers and other concerned authorities to take necessary step to stop this smoking among the people of the country. Literature review: The gender differences in smoking can be interpreted through culture. Countries with lower gender empowerment have more gender differences in smoking. Death, diseases and financial burden associated with smoking are expected to increase or double in less developed and developing countries as they are now remain the focus of tobacco industry worldwide. A lot of colleges and universities student begin to smoke being the simple focus for tobacco industry and young people are barraged with tobacco messages and in some cases offer free cigarette. The government of Australia has aggressively increased tax on Tobacco products. This has made the price for tobacco goods double and in some cases even more. The Australian government is the first to introduce plain packing. The cigarette packs just contain the brand name in small fonts and with a picture which discourages smokers. Apart from the real value of tobacco purchases, the cost of cigarette use have more far- reaching health and economic impacts on families, private individual, employers and taxpayers. This approach has its own results. It has discouraged the newcomers from taking up smoking. But it has failed to create any significant changes in the adult smoking population. Some reduced smoking due to this reason. Others simply increased their smoking habits as resistant. Some did for psychological needs. The government of Australia has done a lot for reducing smoking in the country, in the last decade. The government has introduced aggressive taxation on tobacco products. The cigarette packs have become uglier in the last few years due to plain packing. The government has also created rules for disallowing smoking in public places, especially near the children's playgrounds and public transports in South Australia. The bans in tobacco consumption have impacts on the country's health as well as in the economy. It is claimed that due to the aggressive and progressive control of tobacco in developed world, smoking rate have reduced to 50% over the past four decades and also the mortality rate of smoking related illness or diseases including cancer and cardiovascular diseases are no diminishing and in few of these countries smoke free programs are protecting non-smokers from inhaling smoke. Recommendations: The recommendations that follow from the study are as follows: The study suggests that the numbers of smokers are increasing rapidly and also the diseases due to smoking are increasing. Therefore, the government and the concerned authorities should take necessary steps to control the matter. The smoking habits of the people can be controlled by generating awareness among the people. The study had been conducted by taking a very small sample. The research aims to find the impact on health and economy due to smoking for the whole country Australia. Therefore, the study could have been better if a few more samples could have been considered. The dataset also has some missing values. The missing values could be substituted with the help of some effective statistical techniques like mean Results and discussions: The data has been analyzed using various statistical methods. The following conclusions can be drawn from the analysis of the data. The data analysis results shows that the tendency of smoking is more among the males than among the females The cross tabulation results shows that the frequency of male smokers are more than female smokers, most of the smokers are above the age of 60 years and has education level till college. The results of the regression study reveals that most of the education level does not have much effect on expense of smoking however gender has some effect on smoking habits. The secondary datasets shows that the deaths due to smoking are more than prevented. Conclusions: The research has been carried out by taking a sample of size 60. The data has been collected by the method of simple random sampling. The data analysis results show that the tendency of smoking is more among the males than among the females. The cross tabulation results shows that the frequency of male smokers are more than female smokers and most of the smokers are above the age of 60 years. The secondary datasets shows that the deaths due to smoking are more than prevented. This implies that smoking has some serious effect on health. There are certain limitations of the study which are discussed as follows: The study has been conducted by taking a very small sample. The size of the sample is only 60. This has been done due to limited amount of resources that used for the study. The survey has been conducted by using only simple random sampling. The study could have been better if some effective sampling methods like cluster sampling could have been used. The different regions of the country could have been taken as each cluster.