Household Characteristics and the Pattern of Gambling, Alcohol and Tobacco Expenditures

Unhealthy behaviors, namely problematic gambling, alcohol consumption, and smoking, are key risk factors for a large proportion of the population and these behaviors have been found to be interrelated. This study illustrates the pattern of the unhealthy behaviors in Thailand by clustering households based on their gambling, alcohol and tobacco expenditures using the k-mean clustering method. In addition, we also examine household characteristics associated with households in each cluster using the multinomial logit model. The results show that the optimal number of clusters is eight, consisting of one cluster for households with no or low spending on gambling, alcohol, and tobacco, three clusters for households with one spending dimension, three clusters for households with two spending dimensions, and one cluster with all three spending dimensions. From the cluster sizes, only 42% of households do not spend on any of the three dimensions of unhealthy behaviors and gambling is a major problem in Thailand, with 33% of households falling into the gamble-only cluster. In addition, 16% fall into clusters with multidimensional unhealthy behaviors. Household characteristics associated with gambling, alcohol, and tobacco use are found to vary across each type of behavior and to differ across multidimensional clusters of unhealthy behaviors. The prevalence of each cluster illustrates the magnitude of the problems of the single and multidimensional unhealthy behaviors, and the household characteristics associated with each cluster might indicate target households in need of assistance.