placestats

Redistribution vs. Tobacco use

Holds up after adjusting for income

Across 45 countries, Redistribution and Tobacco use rise and fall together at r = +0.17 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). It holds up almost unchanged when only countries with similar income (GDP per person) are compared (r = +0.36, q = 0.033, allowing for the many pairs tested). Caution: much weaker within regions than across them (largely a between-region difference).

Comparing countries across the middle half of redistribution, 23.2% to 38.1% reduction in the Gini, tobacco use is worse by 1.65% of adults at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 4.41% of adults.

Link before adjusting (r)+0.174p = 0.254 · 45 countries
After adjusting for national income+0.357p = 0.017 · likely range [+0.07, +0.59]
p, allowing for regions0.002standard error 0.070 · 7 regions
Check for luck (q)0.033across 12,497 pairs

How to read these.r runs from −1 (one goes up as the other goes down) to +1 (they rise together), and 0 means no link. Adjusting for national income means comparing countries with the same GDP per person, so differences in wealth can’t explain the link. Income is used in percentage terms, since an extra $1,000 means more to a poor country than to a rich one. p is how likely a link this strong would be if there were really none. Below 0.05 means it is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 1.1e-32 means a decimal point followed by 31 zeros and then 11, so very close to zero. The likely range is where the true figure probably lies, and a range that crosses zero means the link could easily be chance. Countries in the same region tend to resemble each other, so the third figure allows for that, which gives a fairer p. The standard error is the typical size of the error in r. Finally, testing this many pairs means some will look strong by luck alone. A q below 0.05 means this link is unlikely to be one of those.

Redistribution · % reduction in the Ginilink with income +0.50 · moderate
Tobacco use · % of adultslink with income +0.24 · independent

“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.

Every country as a dot

Redistribution · % reduction in the Gini →Tobacco use · % of adults →2.67%48.3%7.9%38.7%Australia: 27.7% reduction in the Gini, 11.6% of adultsAustria: 41.4% reduction in the Gini, 23.8% of adultsBelgium: 47.7% reduction in the Gini, 23.5% of adultsBulgaria: 26% reduction in the Gini, 38.7% of adultsBrazil: 13.8% reduction in the Gini, 11.9% of adultsCanada: 29.3% reduction in the Gini, 11.2% of adultsSwitzerland: 21.2% reduction in the Gini, 23.1% of adultsChile: 8.68% reduction in the Gini, 26.7% of adultsChina: 6.22% reduction in the Gini, 22.8% of adultsCosta Rica: 12.6% reduction in the Gini, 7.9% of adultsCzechia: 43.5% reduction in the Gini, 28.4% of adultsGermany: 38.7% reduction in the Gini, 22% of adultsDenmark: 37.5% reduction in the Gini, 15.7% of adultsSpain: 34.4% reduction in the Gini, 27.6% of adultsEstonia: 33.5% reduction in the Gini, 26.1% of adultsFinland: 47.2% reduction in the Gini, 21.4% of adultsFrance: 42.2% reduction in the Gini, 33.6% of adultsUnited Kingdom: 29.7% reduction in the Gini, 12.8% of adultsGreece: 36.9% reduction in the Gini, 30.2% of adultsCroatia: 33.1% reduction in the Gini, 34.4% of adultsHungary: 29.4% reduction in the Gini, 30.8% of adultsIndia: 2.67% reduction in the Gini, 22.6% of adultsIreland: 41.2% reduction in the Gini, 18.2% of adultsIceland: 35.7% reduction in the Gini, 9.2% of adultsIsrael: 23.2% reduction in the Gini, 21.2% of adultsItaly: 36.2% reduction in the Gini, 22.4% of adultsJapan: 34.1% reduction in the Gini, 17.5% of adultsKorea, Rep.: 18.2% reduction in the Gini, 18.6% of adultsLithuania: 29.7% reduction in the Gini, 31.4% of adultsLuxembourg: 35.7% reduction in the Gini, 24.5% of adultsLatvia: 28.1% reduction in the Gini, 34.6% of adultsMexico: 3.77% reduction in the Gini, 15.7% of adultsNetherlands: 34.2% reduction in the Gini, 20.5% of adultsNorway: 39.5% reduction in the Gini, 12.9% of adultsNew Zealand: 28.7% reduction in the Gini, 9.3% of adultsPoland: 41.9% reduction in the Gini, 21.7% of adultsPortugal: 36.5% reduction in the Gini, 28.6% of adultsRomania: 38.1% reduction in the Gini, 29.7% of adultsRussian Federation: 27% reduction in the Gini, 27% of adultsSlovak Republic: 48.3% reduction in the Gini, 29.5% of adultsSlovenia: 42.4% reduction in the Gini, 20.9% of adultsSweden: 33.1% reduction in the Gini, 20.3% of adultsTurkiye: 18.6% reduction in the Gini, 31.1% of adultsUnited States: 22.1% reduction in the Gini, 15.8% of adultsSouth Africa: 12.8% reduction in the Gini, 23.7% of adultsBGRBRACHLCRICZEFRAINDISLMEXNORNZLSVK

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

MethodrpCountries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted+0.1740.25445
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted+0.1530.31645
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income+0.3570.01745
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income+0.3880.00945

The rank version uses only each country’s place in line, from lowest to highest, so a few extreme countries count for less. The adjusted and unadjusted versions use the same 45 countries: those that report both measures and GDP per person. So the gap between them comes from the adjustment, not from a change in which countries are counted. Drop in the size of r after adjusting: -0.184 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from +0.326 (without CRI) to +0.390 (without CHE). The bar above shows that range on a scale from −1 to +1, with the solid line at the full result. The single country that moves r most: CHE (+0.033).

Fragile: this link may not hold up.
  • much weaker within regions than across them (largely a between-region difference)

Within each region

Countries are not separate, unrelated cases, and neighbors share a lot. A link that holds inside each region is far more believable than one that shows up only when comparing regions.

nr
Europe & Central Asia31-0.16

By income third

If the link shows up only in the richest third of countries, it is a feature of rich countries, not a general pattern.

nr
Poorest third15+0.33
Middle third15+0.34
Richest third15+0.31

By largest religious group

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

nr
Christians36+0.38

Without outliers (countries far outside the middle half of countries on either measure, by more than one and a half times the width of that middle half): r = +0.357 after dropping 0 countries.

Two series, one country

Both measures over the years for one country you pick. The two charts are stacked so they share only the years along the bottom.

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Over time, within countries

Everything above compares countries with each other at one moment. This section compares each country only with itself over 0years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.

Not enough history inside each country to look at this over time. That needs countries measured for several years in a row, and at least one of these measures is measured too rarely.

The data


% reduction in the Gini
% of adults		Years
Slovak Republic SVK48.3%29.5%2023, 2024
Belgium BEL47.7%23.5%2023, 2024
Finland FIN47.2%21.4%2023, 2024
Czechia CZE43.5%28.4%2023, 2024
Slovenia SVN42.4%20.9%2023, 2024
France FRA42.2%33.6%2023, 2024
Poland POL41.9%21.7%2023, 2024
Austria AUT41.4%23.8%2023, 2024
Ireland IRL41.2%18.2%2023, 2024
Norway NOR39.5%12.9%2022, 2024
Germany DEU38.7%22%2022, 2024
Romania ROU38.1%29.7%2023, 2024
Denmark DNK37.5%15.7%2022, 2024
Greece GRC36.9%30.2%2023, 2024
Portugal PRT36.5%28.6%2023, 2024

OECD databases as named on each indicator: PISA, Social Expenditure Database (SOCX), Income Distribution Database, Development Assistance Committee statistics, Family Database, Government at a Glance, Corporate Tax Statistics, employment and environment statistics
World Bank, World Development Indicators

Sources

Redistribution

Reduction in the Gini coefficient from taxes and transfers

OECD · via Our World in Data · CC BY 4.0 (OECD terms and conditions) · updated annual, except the snapshots noted per indicator · comparable from 2011 only

The Gini before taxes and payments minus the Gini after them, as a share of the first. It shows how much of the inequality produced by the market the government removes. It is built from the before-tax Gini above, so their pair is built from the same numbers and flagged. No "better" direction is set: a country may redistribute little because its market incomes are already equal.

Tobacco use

Prevalence of current tobacco use (% of adults, age-standardised)

World Health Organization · CC BY 4.0 · updated quarterly

Published every other year.

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2011–2024. To adjust for income, each measure is first predicted from GDP per person (in percentage terms, on a log scale) with a straight-line fit. Only what is left over is then compared. This is called a partial correlation. The line is drawn the standard way (ordinary least squares), which picks the line that comes closest to all the countries at once. The error margins allow for countries in the same region resembling each other, using 7 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 12,497 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated DYB 2024. How the country data works · explore Redistribution and Tobacco use

This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Redistribution changes Tobacco use, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.

More links with Redistribution or Tobacco use