Married individuals are healthier than single individuals though the reasons are not well understood. Individuals with spouses/or partners are less likely to smoke. We explore the relationship between health and marital status by analyzing three potential channels through which marriage affects smoking, i.e., consumption externalities (one spouse's smoking affects the other spouse's welfare), altruism (one spouse reduces smoking in response to the other spouse's bad health), and learning about risks of smoking from the health experience of one's spouse. We find spousal health does not affect smoking due to altruism or learning within the household but do find evidence for consumption externalities. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. 2006
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Volume (Year): 32 (2006) Issue (Month): 1 (January) Pages: 17-35 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Smith, V. Kerry & Taylor, Donald H., Jr. & Sloan, Frank A. & Johnson, F. Reed & Desvousges, William H., 2000.
"Do Smokers Respond to Health Shocks?,"
Working Papers
00-08, Duke University, Department of Economics.
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