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1. Main facts and figures
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13.9% of adults in England smoked in 2019
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the percentage of adults who smoked was higher than average in the Mixed (19.5%) and White (14.4%) ethnic groups
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it was lower than average in the Chinese (6.7%), Asian (8.3%) and Black (9.7%) ethnic groups
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from 2012 to 2019, the percentage of White adults who smoked went down from 20.1% to 14.4%
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the percentage of Black adults who smoked went down from 13.0% to 9.7% and the percentage of Asian adults who smoked went down from 10.8% to 8.3%
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the percentage of adults who smoked went down in other ethnic groups, but not enough people were surveyed to make reliable generalisations
2. Things you need to know
What the data measures
The data measures the percentage of adults (aged 18 and above) in England who said they were cigarette smokers at the time they were surveyed, by ethnicity.
Percentages have been rounded to 1 decimal point.
The ethnic groups used in the data
Data is shown for the following aggregated ethnic groups:
- Asian
- Black
- Chinese
- Mixed
- White
- Other
This is because the number of people surveyed was too small to make any reliable generalisations about any of the 18 ethnic groups.
There is a separate category for people whose ethnicity was not known – this was less than 0.1% of people in 2019.
Methodology
Read the detailed methodology document for the data on this page.
It is unlikely that everyone who was a smoker when they were surveyed responded accurately. This may be due to the social stigma some people attach to smoking. As a result, the findings are likely to underestimate the true percentage of people who were smokers.
The figures on this page are based on survey data. Find out more about:
- interpreting survey data, including how reliability is affected by the number of people surveyed
- how weighting is used to make survey data more representative of the whole population
In the data file
See Download the data for:
- unrounded figures
- figures for all ethnic groups combined, including people whose ethnicity was not known
- confidence intervals for each ethnic group
3. By ethnicity over time
| Ethnicity | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| % | % | % | % | % | % | % | % | |
| All | 19.3 | 18.4 | 17.8 | 16.9 | 15.5 | 14.9 | 14.4 | 13.9 |
| Asian | 10.8 | 10.8 | 10.8 | 10.0 | 9.4 | 9.3 | 9.1 | 8.3 |
| Black | 13.0 | 12.0 | 13.5 | 11.3 | 10.3 | 10.4 | 11.0 | 9.7 |
| Chinese | 11.5 | 10.0 | 10.9 | 12.2 | 7.4 | 8.6 | 7.7 | 6.7 |
| Mixed | 24.9 | 25.5 | 24.4 | 22.4 | 20.8 | 20.5 | 20.4 | 19.5 |
| White | 20.1 | 19.2 | 18.5 | 17.6 | 16.2 | 15.4 | 15.0 | 14.4 |
| Other | 18.3 | 16.3 | 16.8 | 16.7 | 14.6 | 16.5 | 15.5 | 15.6 |
Download table data for ‘By ethnicity over time’ (CSV) Source data for ‘By ethnicity over time’ (CSV)
4. Data sources
Source
Type of data
Survey data
Type of statistic
National Statistics
Publisher
Office for National Statistics
Note on corrections or updates
Higher-level figures may differ from those published by the Department for Work and Pensions and the Office for National Statistics that use the Labour Force Survey.
Publication frequency
Yearly
Purpose of data source
The Annual Population Survey (APS) is the largest ongoing household survey in the UK and covers a range of topics, including:
- personal characteristics
- labour market status
- work characteristics
- education
- health
The purpose of the APS is to provide information on important social and socio-economic variables at local levels, such as labour market estimates.
The published statistics also allow the government to monitor estimates on a range of issues between censuses.
5. Download the data
This file contains the following: measure, ethnicity, time, geography, gender, age, value, sample size, confidence intervals (lower bound, upper bound).