Between 1993 and 2003, active and consistent tobacco control policy caused a 33%
decline in aggregate cigarette consumption (Van Walbeek, 2003:38). This led to a
subsequent rise of “roll-your-own” cigarettes in South Africa (Van Walbeek, 2003). A
large proportion of the current South African literature on tobacco consumption
emphasises the impact of tobacco control legislation and the increasing tobacco
excise tax on the South African fiscus. To date, sparse household-level analysis has
been conducted in order to establish the kinds of household trends in tobacco and
cigarette consumption since the tightening of South African tobacco control policies
between 1993 and 2003. The aim of this study is to conduct a household-level analysis
of tobacco consumption in South Africa by applying a series of non-regression
techniques to three waves of household survey and panel data derived from the
National Income Dynamic Study (NIDS). Some of the findings suggest that between
2008 and 2012, over 500 000 South African households contained at least one regular
smoker and that, on average, between 13 to 15 million households consumed tobacco
and cigarettes on a monthly basis. Furthermore, households with and without smokers
claimed to have allocated, on average, a similar amount of their disposable income to
tobacco and cigarettes. Other findings imply that while the household prevalence of
smoking declined between 2008 and 2012, the budget share of household spending
on tobacco and cigarettes was unchanged.