Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the UK (Cornish et al., 2019) and represents both a risk of serious illness (Prescott, 2019; Bello et al., 2014) and a significant burden on public services and the economy (Ekpu and Brown, 2015). As a result, research which may have potential implications for smoking cessation interventions may be considered justified.

A number of studies have examined the relationship between financial stress and smoking behaviour and identified associations between these variables (Guillaumier et al., 2017; Siahpush, Borland and Scollo, 2013). However, the exact causal nature of this relationship may be considered somewhat obscure.

The proposed research plans to investigate the possibility of financial stress acting as an active predictor/risk factor of smoking behaviour. The longitudinal nature of the ALSPAC data facilitates research examining how changes in financial stress overtime may relate to later smoking behaviour. Although exact cause and effect may not be identified, tracking the relationship between these variables overtime may offer some form of greater insight into how they interact. This insight may be considered enough to make recommendations for further investigation and/or have implications for smoking cessation interventions.