In 2001, a new socio-economic classification - the National Statistics Socio-economic classification (NS-SEC) - was introduced for all official statistics and surveys. NS-SEC classifies occupations according to different criteria compared with the Social Class and Socio-economic Group classifications which it replaces, and, in addition, the occupational classification underpinning the groupings also changed in 2001.

This follows another change introduced on the GHS in 2000, which was the replacement of the head of household with the household reference person as the basis for deriving a socio-economic variable reflecting the living standards of the household. The definition of household reference person removes the precedence given to men in the head of household definition (see Appendix A).

The new NS-SEC does not allow categories to be collapsed into broad non-manual and manual groupings. So, since the Cancer Plan targets for England relate particularly to those in the manual socio-economic groups, the old socio-economic groupings have been recreated for this report in Table 8.9. Because of the new occupation coding, the classifications are not exactly the same, and comparisons with previous years should be treated with caution.

The GHS has consistently shown striking differences in the prevalence of cigarette smoking in relation to socio-economic group, with smoking being considerably more prevalent among those in manual groups than among those in non-manual groups. In the 1970s and 1980s, the prevalence of cigarette smoking fell more sharply among those in non-manual than in manual groups, so that differences between the groups became proportionately greater (table not shown). There was little further change in the relative proportions smoking cigarettes during the 1990s.

In England, the overall prevalence of cigarette smoking among those in manual socio-economic groups fell from 33% in 1998 to 31% in 2000, but showed no statistically significant change in 2001 at 32%, suggesting little progress in relation to the targets set out in the Cancer Plan. However, caution is advisable when making comparisons over this period because the data may have been affected by the change from head of household to household reference person as the basis for assessing socio-economic group and from the introduction of the revised occupation coding and socio-economic classification.

In England in 2001, 33% of men living in households in the manual group smoked cigarettes compared with 22% of those in non-manual households. The corresponding proportions for women were 30% and 20%.

Table 8.10 shows the prevalence of cigarette smoking in 2001 in relation to the eight- and three- category versions of NS-SEC. As was the case with the socio-economic groupings used previously, there were striking differences between the various classes. Prevalence was lowest among those in higher professional and higher managerial households (15% and 16% respectively) and highest, at 35%, among those whose household reference person was in a routine occupation.