The inconsistency of associations between men and
women was also evident when examining discordant pairs.
Overall, more spouses were concordant on smoking status
than not. When spouseswere discordant, husbandsweremore
likely to have ever smoked compared with their wives, reflecting
the higher smoking rates among men than women
in the general population (3). At the same time, however,
among couples in which both spouses reported a history of
smoking, wives were more likely to continue to smoke, and
this was true across all visits.