Social Norms and Teenage Smoking: The Dark Side of Gender Equality

Núria Rodriguez-Planas and Anna Sanz-de-Galdeano

No 10134, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper is the first to provide evidence that cultural attitudes towards gender equality affect behaviors with potentially devastating health consequences, and that they do so differently for male and female teenagers. In particular, we show that descending from more gender-equal societies makes girls relatively more prone to smoke than boys. Using data from over 6,000 second-generation immigrant teenagers coming from 45 different countries of ancestry and living in Spain, we find that the higher the degree of gender equality in the country of ancestry, the higher the likelihood that immigrant girls smoke relative to boys, even after we control for parental, sibling, and peer smoking. Importantly, we uncover similar patterns when analyzing other risky behaviors such as drinking or smoking marijuana. This reinforces the idea that more gender-equal social norms may come at an extra cost to women's health, as they increasingly engage in risky behaviors (beyond smoking) traditionally more prevalent among men.

Keywords: gender gap index; gender equality; culture and institutions; smoking; risky behaviors (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 I12 J15 J16 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 58 pages
Date: 2016-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-hea and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published - substantially revised version published as 'Intergenerational Transmission of Gender Social Norms and Teenage Smoking' in: Social Science and Medicine, 2019, 222, 122-132

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