BACKGROUND AND AIMS: E-cigarettes may potentially help young adult smokers to quit smoking, yet little is known about differences among socio-economic groups. We examined associations between key socio-economic characteristics and e-cigarette use among recent former smokers and current smokers in a sample of young adults in England.

DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS AND MEASUREMENTS: We used data on 346 recent former regular (daily for 12+ months) smokers and 1913 current smokers from the ages 25-26 wave of the Next Steps cohort study (2015-2016). In multinomial logistic regression, we estimated relative risk ratios (RRR) of e-cigarette use (never, former, non-daily, daily) by educational attainment, social class [using the National Statistics Socio-economic classification (NS-SEC)] and employment status [full-time, part-time, unemployed and other 'inactivity' (e.g. stay-at-home parents and permanantly disabled)], adjusting for sex.

FINDINGS: Among recent former regular smokers, there were no patterns of association between socio-economic characteristics and e-cigarette use. Among current smokers: (1) compared with higher occupation (NS-SEC I/II), intermediate occupation (NS-SEC III/IV) was positively associated with non-daily e-cigarette use [RRR = 1.77, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.03-3.03]; (2) compared with full-time employment, unemployment was negatively associated with non-daily and daily e-cigarette use (RRR = 0.38, 95% CI = 0.18-0.81; RRR = 0.12, 95% CI = 0.02-0.56) and other economic inactivity was negatively associated with daily e-cigarette use (RRR = 0.39, 95% CI = 0.16-0.93).

CONCLUSIONS: Among young adult smokers in England, lower-status occupational groups were more likely to use e-cigarettes on a non-daily basis than to have never used compared with higher status occupational groups. Compared with people in full-time employment, those without employment were less likely to use e-cigarettes daily than to have never used.