“Smoking your child’s job away”: Parental smoking during one’s childhood and the probability of being employed in adulthood

Kushneel Prakash () and Sanjesh Kumar
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Sanjesh Kumar: Department of Economics, Monash University

Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series from Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne

Abstract: We examine the relationship between parental smoking in childhood and the probability of being employed in adulthood. To do so, we use 18 waves of the nationally representative longitudinal data from the Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey. We find that parental smoking in childhood is an important factor contributing to the likelihood of individuals being unemployed in adulthood. Our estimate suggests that individuals whose parents smoked during their childhood have 1.7 percentage points lower probability of being employed in adulthood than individuals of non-smoking parents. This finding is robust to the use of bounding approach to test for coefficient stability and matching methods to attribute causal interpretation. We find that self-health and mental health, along with non-cognitive skills in the form of emotional stability and conscientiousness in adulthood are important channels through which exposure to parental smoking in childhood influences the probability of employment in adulthood.

Keywords: Early-life experiences; Childhood; Parental smoking; Employment; Australia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D10 I10 J21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 4pp
Date: 2021-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
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Journal Article: “Smoking your child’s job away”: Parental smoking during one’s childhood and the probability of being employed in adulthood (2021)
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