Risk factors to health

In 2015, 19.6% of the population aged 14 and over were smokers (10,344 millions of the population), 22.8% were former smokers and 56.3% no smokers. It is possible to observe strong gender differences: 15% of women were smokers compared to 24.6% of men of the same age.

For men the highest rate of smokers was observed among people aged 25-34 years (33.0%), for women among people aged 55-59 years old (20.8%).

From 2001 to 2015 the number of smokers has been decreasing from 23.7% to 19.6%. For men, who started in 2001 from higher levels, the reduction was equal to 6.4 percentage points (from 31% to 24.6%), for women it was equal to 2 percentage points (from 16.9% to 15%). Therefore, gender differences decreased from 14.1 to 9.6 percentage points.

For Information
Emanuela Bologna
06 4673.7422
bologna@istat.it