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Education And Smoking: Were Vietnam War Draft Avoiders Also More Likely To Avoid Smoking?

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  • Franque Grimard
  • Daniel Parent

Abstract

We use the Vietnam War draft avoidance behavior documented by Card and Lemieux (2001) as a quasi-natural experiment to infer causation from education to smoking and find strong evidence that education, whether measured in years of completed schooling or in educational attainment categories, reduces the probability of smoking at the time of the interview, more particularly the probability of smoking regularly. However, while we find that more education substantially increases the probability of never smoking, there is little evidence that it helps people stop smoking, although the estimates are fairly imprecise. Potential mechanisms linking education and smoking are also explored.

Suggested Citation

  • Franque Grimard & Daniel Parent, 2006. "Education And Smoking: Were Vietnam War Draft Avoiders Also More Likely To Avoid Smoking?," Departmental Working Papers 2006-05, McGill University, Department of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:mcl:mclwop:2006-05
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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education
    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior

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