Lighting Up and Slimming Down: The Effects of Body Weight and Cigarette Prices on Adolescent Smoking Initiation

John Cawley, Sara Markowitz and John Tauras

No 9561, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper examines the influence of body weight, body image, and cigarette prices in determining adolescent smoking initiation. Adolescents who desire to lose weight may initiate smoking as a method of appetite control. Such behavior may undermine the goals of tobacco control policies that seek to prevent smoking initiation. Using a nationally representative panel of adolescents, we show that smoking initiation is more likely among females who are overweight, who report trying to lose weight, or who describe themselves as overweight. In contrast, neither objective nor subjective measures of weight predict smoking initiation by males. Higher cigarette prices decrease the probability of smoking initiation among males but have no impact on female smoking initiation. These gender-specific differences may help explain the mixed and inconclusive evidence of the impact of price on smoking initiation found in previous literature

JEL-codes: I0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
Note: EH
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Published as Cawley, John, Sara Markowitz, and John Tauras. "Lighting Up and Slimming Down: The Effects of Body Weight and Cigarette Prices on Adolescent Smoking Initiation." Journal of Health Economics, March 2004, 23(2): 293-311.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w9561.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Lighting up and slimming down: the effects of body weight and cigarette prices on adolescent smoking initiation (2004)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9561

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w9561

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().