IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mea/meawpa/201702.html

Education differences in smoking: selection versus causation

Author

Listed:
  • Jürges, Hendrik

  • Meyer, Sophie-Charlotte

    (Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA))

Abstract

We investigate sources of educational differences in smoking. Using a large German data set containing retrospective information on the age at smoking onset, we compare age-specific hazard rates of starting smoking between (future) low and high educated individuals. We find that up to 90 % of the educational differences in smoking develop before the age of 16, i. e. before compulsory schooling is completed. This education gap persists into adulthood. Further, we examine the role of health-related knowledge (proxied by working in health-related occupations) and find it hardly explains smoking decisions. Our findings suggest that (unobserved) factors determining both the selection into smoking and education are almost exclusively responsible for educational differences in smoking. Only small parts of the education gap seem to be caused by general or health-specific education. The effectiveness of education policy to combat smoking is thus likely limited.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Jürges, Hendrik & Meyer, Sophie-Charlotte, 2016. "Education differences in smoking: selection versus causation," MEA discussion paper series 201702, Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA) at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy.
    • Handle: RePEc:mea:meawpa:201702
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://mea.mpisoc.mpg.de/uploads/user_mea_discussionpapers/1756_DP02-2017.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Mathias Huebener, 2025. "The Effects of Education on Health: An Intergenerational Perspective," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 60(3), pages 743-779.
    3. Mathias Huebener, 2019. "Life Expectancy and Parental Education in Germany," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 1023, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    4. Huebener, Mathias, 2019. "Life expectancy and parental education," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 232(C), pages 351-365.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mea:meawpa:201702. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Henning Frankenberger (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.mea.mpisoc.mpg.de/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.