Should the 2021 Census Have a Smoking Question?
Smoking remains the leading cause of most preventable diseases in Australia, and causes nearly 10% of the burden of disease in Australia.
Yet we still don’t have reliable data on the nature of smoking across the whole country. Now, as a remedy to this, there are calls for a smoking question to be included on the 2021 census.
But is such a question necessary, and how do you go about constructing a question which will collect data accurately?
The Daily producer Hannah Gardiner asks whether a smoking question should be added to the next census.