Abstract
This study investigates the effects of early smoking on educational attainment and labor market performance by using mixed ordered and mixed proportional hazard models. The results show that early smoking adversely affects educational attainment and initial labor market performance, but only for males. The probability to finish a scientific degree is 4%-point lower for an early smoker. The effect of early smoking on initial labor market performance is indirect through educational attainment. Once the indirect effect is controlled for there is no direct effect. Moreover, for males only, early smoking has a negative effect on current labor market performance even after conditioning on educational attainment. The probability to have an academic job is 4%-point lower for an early smoker. For females neither education nor labor market performance is affected by early smoking.
Highlights
A vast amount of evidence has piled up about serious negative consequences of smoking since the 1964 Surgeon General’s report on the health effects of smoking (Levine et al 1997)
The results show that early smoking has a negative effect on educational attainment
This study focuses on the effects of early initiation of smoking on educational attainment and labor market performance
Summary
A vast amount of evidence has piled up about serious negative consequences of smoking since the 1964 Surgeon General’s report on the health effects of smoking (Levine et al 1997). Several studies discuss the weakness of instruments used for risky health behaviors including smoking and its consequences (French and Popovici 2011; Bound et al 1995; Conley et al 2012) Another problem with the IV estimation in the literature is that the negative smoking effect on labor market performance increases in magnitude once the instruments are used (Auld 1998; Zarkin et al 1998; Van Ours 2004). Smoking dynamics and ordered outcomes (educational attainment and job rankings) are modelled jointly to allow for correlation between unobserved heterogeneity This controls for unobserved factors that can jointly affect smoking, education and labor market performance.
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