PEOPLE who identify as having a faith are less likely to smoke than those people without religion, statistics from the Office for National Statistics suggest.
A new set of data on religion and health in England and Wales showed that smoking prevalence in England and Wales from 2016 to 2018 was significantly higher among those identifying as having no religion (18 per cent) than among those who identified as Muslim (11 per cent), Christian (11 per cent), Hindu (five per cent), Jewish (four per cent), Sikh (two per cent), or “any other religion” (nine per cent).
The data also suggests that those who identified as Muslim were more likely to report having no qualifications than most other religious groups in England and Wales, in 2018.
Those who identified as Christian, however, had the lowest percentage with a degree or equivalent qualification.
Christians were the second most likely to have no qualifications at all, at eight per cent, and just 30 per cent of those who identified as Christians had degrees.
On politics, about six in ten adults who identified as Jewish reported having participated in political activities in England in 2016 to 2017; only about one quarter of those who identified as Sikh (26 per cent) and Hindu (27 per cent) reported this. Forty-one per cent of those who identified as Christians said that they had undertaken one or more of a number of political activities in 2016-2017.