Education, Information and Smoking Decisions: Evidence from Smoking Histories in the United States, 1940–2000

Damien de Walque

Journal of Human Resources, 2010, vol. 45, issue 3

Abstract: This paper tests the hypothesis that education improves health and increases life expectancy. The analysis of smoking histories shows that after 1950, when information about the dangers of tobacco started to diffuse, the prevalence of smoking declined earlier and most dramatically for college graduates. I construct panels based on smoking histories in an attempt to isolate the causal effect of smoking from the influence of time-invariant unobservable characteristics. The results suggest that, at least among women, college education has a negative effect on smoking prevalence and that more educated individuals responded faster to the diffusion of information on the dangers of smoking.

Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (49)

Downloads: (external link)
http://jhr.uwpress.org/cgi/reprint/45/3/682
A subscription is required to access pdf files. Pay per article is available.

Related works:
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:uwp:jhriss:v:45:y:2010:iii:1:p682-717

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Human Resources from University of Wisconsin Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().