Abstract
This paper analyzes the effect of education on starting and quitting smoking. We use longitudinal data of Australian twins and estimate duration models for smoking and non-smoking durations. Our approach enables us to take account of the endogeneity of education, censoring of smoking durations, and the timing of starting smoking versus that of completion of education. We find that one additional year of education reduces the duration of smoking with 9 months but has no effect on the decision to start smoking. This finding is robust with respect to different identifying assumptions and seems largely confined to male twins.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Various recent studies that focus on health outcomes other than smoking also use an instrumental variable approach (Currie and Moretti 2003; Lleras-Muney 2005; Oreopoulos 2006; Kenkel et al. 2006; Lindeboom et al. 2009; Mazumder 2007; Albouy and Lequien 2009). As to the effect on smoking, Sander (1995) studies the effect of education on the decision to quit smoking with parental schooling as an instrument for schooling. He finds schooling to have a substantial positive effect on quitting smoking. Kenkel et al. (2006), however, question the validity of parents schooling as instruments.
Walque (2010) also exploits the longitudinal character of smoking data but then focuses on the incidence of smoking. Rather than studying the effects of education, duration models of smoking have been used to estimate the effects of tobacco prices and tobacco regulation (Tauras and Chaloupka 1999; Forster and Jones 2001; Decicca et al. 2007; Boudarbat and Malhotra 2008; Kidd and Hopkins 2004).
Bratti and Miranda (2009) are one of the few studies that take explicit account of endogeneity of smoking decisions by modeling both the decision to enroll in higher education and smoking intensity.
The education system of Australia is divided into three broad areas: primary school, secondary school, and tertiary education. Tertiary education (or higher education) in Australia is primarily study at university or a technical college in order to receive a qualification or further skills and training (TAFE). TAFE institutions provide a wide range of predominantly vocational tertiary education and generally award qualifications up to the level of advanced diploma, which is below that of Bachelor degree.
We have used the third item (the reported number of smoking years) to test for the sensitivity of our estimation results with respect to measurement errors – see also footnote 10.
In the data, the age of 12 is the minimum age at which smoking durations start, which is the same as in Douglas (1998).
As shown in Table 3 we have included missing dummies for three explanatory variables (i.e., father’s education, mother’s education, and birth weight). The interpretation of the dummy coefficients is cumbersome, since our model is non-linear, and the education variables can take a range of values. In light of our current analysis, however, the costs of dropping missing observations are higher. In particular, for 25 % of the observations we miss at least one of the relevant three variables. Dropping observations with missing variables would thus harm the efficiency of our estimates.
They also report that 86 % of the gender difference in the number of cigarettes smoked per day is due to differences in the estimated coefficients and only 14 % due to different characteristics.
We tested the sensitivity to measurement errors in reported smoking and completed education years. For the quitting hazard we replaced the smoking durations that were inferred from the reported starting and ending dates by those directly reported by the respondents (“how many years have you smoked during your life”). We also replaced the reported education measures of twins by those that were reported by the other twin brother or sister. This also led to similar estimation results. Another robustness test entailed the estimation of non-linear education effects, but this did not change our estimation results either.
With modeling unobserved heterogeneity as individual effects, repeated spells are observed only for the sub-sample of respondents that have quitted smoking. For this group, we observe an uncensored non-smoking duration prior to the smoking duration and a censored non-smoking spell after the smoking duration.
It should be noted here that the LPM estimates are identified from within twin variation only and not exploiting the variation in education levels when smoking starts. Thus, it does not come as a surprise that the LPM estimates are higher than the incidence estimate that is inferred from the duration models.
Moreover, Grimard and Parent (2007) find the (total) effect of high school completion on different measures for smoking to amount to 40–76 %-point.
References
Abbring J, Van den Berg G (2003) The non-parametric identification of treatment effects in duration models. Econometrica 71:1491–1517
Albouy V, Lequien L (2009) Does compulsory education lower mortality? J Health Econ 28(1):155–168
Baker L, Treloar S, Reynolds C, Heath A, Martin N (1996) Genetics of educational attainment in Australian Twins: sex differences and secular changes. Behav Genet 26(2):89–102
Bauer T, Göhlman S, Sinning M (2007) Gender differences in smoking behavior. Health Econ 16(9):895–909
Black S, Devereux P, Salvanes K (2007) From the cradle to the labour market? The effect of birth weight on adult outcomes. Q J Econ 122(1): 409–439
Boudarbat B, Malhotra M (2008) The hazards of starting the cigarette smoking habit. Int J Econ Perspect 2(4):93–106
Bratti M, Miranda A (2009) Non-pecuniary returns to higher education: the effect of smoking intensity in the UK. Health Econ 19(8):906–920
Calvin C, Fernandes C, Smith P, Visscher P, Deary I (2009) Is there still a cognitive cost of being a twin in the UK? Intelligence 37:243–248
Chamberlain G (1982) Multivariate regression models for panel data. J Econometrics 18:5–46
Currie J, Moretti E (2003) Mother’s education and the intergenerational transmission of human capital: evidence from college openings. Q J Econ 118(4):1495–1532
Cutler D, Lleras-Muney A (2005) Education and health: evaluating theories and evidence. NBER Working Paper 12352
de Walque D (2007) Does education affect smoking behaviors? Evidence using the Vietnam draft as an instrument for college education. J Health Econ 26(5):877–895
de Walque D (2010) Education, information, and smoking decisions. evidence from smoking histories in the United States, 1940–2000. J Human Resour 45(3):682–717
Decicca P, Kenkel D, Mathios A, Shin Y-J, Lim J-Y (2007) Youth smoking, cigarette prices and anti-smoking sentiment. Health Econ 17(6):733–749
Douglas S, Hariharan G (1994) The hazard of starting smoking: estimates from a split population duration model. J Health Econ 13(2):213–230
Douglas S (1998) The duration of the smoking habit. Econ Inq 36(1):49–64
Farrell P, Fuchs V (1982) Schooling and health: the cigarette connection. J Health Econ 1(3):217–230
Fersterer J, Winter-Ebmer R (2003) Smoking, discount rates, and return to education. Econ Educ Rev 22(6):561–566
Forster M, Jones A (2001) The role of tobacco taxes in starting and quitting smoking: duration analysis of British data. J R Stat Soc 164(3):517–547
Grimard F, Parent D (2007) Education and smoking: were Vietnam war draft avoiders also more likely to avoid smoking? J Health Econ 26(5):896–926
Harris J, Lopez-Valcarel B (2008) Asymmetric social interaction in economics: cigarette smoking among young people in the United States 1992–1999. J Health Econ 27:249–264
Heckman J, Singer B (1984) A method for minimizing the impact of distributional assumptions in econometric models for duration data. Econometrica 52(2):271–320
Hougaard P, Harvald B, Holm N (1992) Measuring the similarities between the lifetimes of adult Danish twins born between 1881 and 1930. J Am Stat Assoc 87:17–24
Kidd M, Hopkins S (2004) The hazards of starting and quitting smoking: some Australian evidence. Econ Rec 80(249):177–192
Khwaja A, Silverman D, Sloand F (2007) Time preference, time discounting, and smoking decisions. J Health Econ 26(5):927–949
Kenkel D, Lillard D, Mathios A (2006) The roles of high school completion and GED receipt in smoking and obesity. J Labor Econ 24(3):635–660
Le A, Miller P, Heath A, Martin N (2005) Early childhood behaviours, schooling, and labour market outcomes: estimates from a sample of twins. Econ Educ Rev 24(1):1–17
Lindeboom M, Llena-Nozal A, Van der Klaauw B (2009) Parental education and child health: evidence form a schooling reform. J Health Econ 28:109–131
Lleras-Muney A (2005) The relationship between education and adult mortality in the United States. Rev of Econ Stud 72(1):189–221
Mazumder B (2007) How did schooling laws improve long-term health and lower mortality? Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. WP 2006–23, Chicago, Il
Miller P, Mulvey C, Martin N (1995) What do twin studies reveal about the economic returns to education? A comparison of Australian and U.S. findings. Am Econ Rev 85(3):586–599
Mundlak Y (1978) On the pooling of time series and cross section data. Econometrica 46(1):69–85
Oreopoulos P (2006) Estimating average and local average treatment effects of education when compulsory schooling laws really matter. Am Econ Rev 96(1):152–175
Sander W (1995) Schooling and quitting smoking. Rev Econ Stat 77(1):191–199
Tauras J, Chaloupka F (1999). Determinants of smoking cessation: an analysis of young adult men and women. NBER working paper 7262
Treasury Australia (2012) Issues in tobacco taxation, Treasury, Australia. 2012–01-03. :http://www.treasury.gov.au/documents/2086/PDF/Document_57.pdf
Tenn S, Herman D, Wendling B (2010) The role of education in the production of health: n empirical analysis of smoking behavior. J Health Econ 29(3):404–417
Van den Berg G (2001) Duration models: specification, identification, and multiple duration. In: Heckman JJ, Leamer E (eds) Handbook of Econometrics, vol 5. North-Holland, Amsterdam
Waldron I (1991) Patterns and causes of gender differences in smoking. Soc Sci Med 32(9):989–1005
Webbink D, Postuma D, Boomsma D, de Geus E, Visscher P (2008) Do twins have lower cognitive ability than singletons? Intelligence 36(6):539–547
Webbink D, Vujic S, Koning P, Martin N (2012) The effect of childhood conduct disorder on human capital. Health Econ 21(8):928–945
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Appendix: Factor analysis of discounting variables
Appendix: Factor analysis of discounting variables
Questions | Factor loading | Unique variance |
|---|---|---|
(i) Taking decisions quickly | ||
“Do you often make decisions in the spur of the moment?” (YES) | 0.42 | 0.82 |
“Have people said that sometimes you act too rashly?” (YES) | 0.57 | 0.67 |
“I like to think about things for a long time before I make a decision.” (NO) | 0.67 | 0.55 |
“I usually think about all the facts before I make a decision.” (NO) | 0.50 | 0.75 |
(ii) Making decisions on instinct | ||
“I nearly always think about all the facts in detail before I make a decision, even when other people demand a quick decision.” (NO) | 0.40 | 0.84 |
“I often do things based on how I feel at the moment, without thinking how they were done in the past.” (NO) | 0.47 | 0.78 |
“I often follow my instincts, hunches, or intuition without thinking through all the details.” (YES) | 0.34 | 0.89 |
(iii) Having debts, no savings | ||
“Would being in debt worry you?” (NO) | 0.21 | 0.96 |
“Do you think people spend too much time safeguarding their future with savings and insurances?”(YES) | 0.19 | 0.96 |
“I am better at saving money than most people” (NO) | 0.16 | 0.98 |
(iv) Running out of money | ||
“I often spend money until I run out of cash or get into debt from using too much credit.” (YES) | 0.70 | 0.51 |
“Because I so often spend too much money on impulse, it is hard for me to save money, even for special plans like a holiday.” (YES) | 0.71 | 0.50 |
“I enjoy saving more than spending it on entertainment or thrills.” (NO) | 0.31 | 0.90 |
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Koning, P., Webbink, D. & Martin, N.G. The effect of education on smoking behavior: new evidence from smoking durations of a sample of twins. Empir Econ 48, 1479–1497 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00181-014-0842-6
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00181-014-0842-6