Analysing adolescent risk-taking behaviour in India: findings from a large-scale survey

Sutapa Maiti, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

This paper tries to examine the key risk-taking behaviours, including tobacco smoking, alcohol consumption, and chewing of tobacco, among adolescents in India by exploring the individual-level data of the household sample focusing on youth (age 10-24) from National Family Health Survey Data (1998-99). The major objective of the study is to identify familial and individual characteristics of youth that engage in risk-taking behaviours. It also tries to analyze if in-school and out-of-school youth behave differently with respect of alcohol and tobacco consumption and if youth in female-headed households behave differently than those in male-headed households. Both logistic regression and multinomial logistic regression method has been used to examine the covariates of adolescent risk-taking behaviours. The findings shows that youth residing in female headed households are more likely to indulge in risk-taking behaviour.