Parents who light up more likely to have kids who smoke

Smoking habits could transmit from father to son and mother to daughter, according to a research published in the journal Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics.

The researchers of Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (USC) collected information from the British Household Panel Survey 1994-2002 and analyzed the transmission of smoking habits between generations.

The results showed sons had a  24 percent chance of becoming addicted to cigarettes if both parents smoke, but only a 12 percent chance if his parents were non-smokers.

For daughters, they had a 23 percent possibility of becoming addicted to tobacco if their parents were smokers, and again just a 12 percent chance if neither of the parents smoked.

"The results obtained show that, in terms of smoking habits, after taking socio-economic variables into account, daughters tend to imitate their mothers, while sons imitate their mothers", says Loureiro, a researcher at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (USC).

Specifically, in single-parent household, mothers would transmit their smoking habits with a 32 percent chance for sons and 28 percent chance for daughters.

Smoking is the lead factor of  lung cancer and has other side effects.

 "These results have clear importance in terms of designing public policies to combat smoking. Policies that are successful in reducing smoking habits among parents will also affect their children. Anti-smoking policies for young people need to be put in place that will also include the family and social context in which they live", suggests Loureiro.

Stephen Lau and editing by Aimee Keenan-greene