Crazy number of the day: 56.8% - percentage of Chinese Doctor's that smoke

March 15, 2009 - PRLog -- Posted By James Flanagan

56.8%, that’s the percentage of male doctors who smoke in China. China Daily quotes Health Minister Chen Zhu at http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2009-03/03/content_7528092.htm.

“About 56.8 percent of male doctors in the country smoke. It is the highest rate in the world, according to the China Preventive Medicine Association (CPMA).”

The article also mentions the number of smokers in China: 350 million. To simplify things, let’s say that China has about 1.3 billion people. So this means that about 27% of the country smokes. Now remember that 56.8% is only male doctors, but that is just above twice the national rate. This leads me to 2 questions:
- what is the percentage of female smokers? and female doctors who are also smokers?
- how much of an impact does wealth have on smoking rates?

Any other possible explanation for the difference between the two percentages?