Abstract
This article comprehensively examines the impact of recent smoking control policies in Japan, increases in cigarette taxes and the enforcement of the Health Promotion Law, on individual smoking choice by using multi-year and nationwide individual survey data to overcome the analytical problems of previous Japanese studies. In the econometric analyses, I specify a simple binary choice model based on a random utility model to examine the effects of smoking control policies on individual smoking choice by employing the instrumental variable probit model to control for the endogeneity of cigarette prices. The empirical results show that an increase in cigarette prices statistically significantly reduces the smoking probability of males by 1.0 percent and that of females by 1.4 to 2.0 percent. The enforcement of the Health Promotion Law has a statistically significant effect on reducing the smoking probability of males by 15.2 percent and of females by 11.9 percent. Furthermore, an increase in cigarette prices has a statistically significant negative effect on the smoking probability of office workers, non-workers, male manual workers, and female unemployed people, and the enforcement of the Health Promotion Law has a statistically significant effect on decreasing the smoking probabilities of office workers, female manual workers, and male non-workers.JEL classificationC25, C26, I18
Highlights
It is known that smoking causes serious health problems, for smokers and for non-smokers through second-hand smoke
The empirical results of this study show that an increase in cigarette prices has a statistically significant effect on the reduction of smoking probability of males by 1.0 percent and of females by 1.4 to 2.0 percent
These results indicate that the instrumental variable (IV)-Probit model is appropriate to estimate the basic models, and the regular Probit model is appropriate to estimate the dynamic models
Summary
It is known that smoking causes serious health problems, for smokers and for non-smokers through second-hand smoke (for example, The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/ The World Bank [1]). To reduce health damage from smoking, the World Health Organization (WHO) ratified The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2003, and many developed countries have implemented a variety of smoking control policies. Various smoking restrictions are enforced in many European countriesa, and individual states in the U.S have imposed smoking restrictions. The Japanese government has only recently begun to take measures to decrease the smoking rate to that of other developed countries and to reduce medical expenditures for smoking-related diseases. The Japanese government formulated The National Health Promotion in the 21st Century Initiative (Health Japan 21) in March 2000, ratified the WHO’s tobacco. The establishment of policy objectives for smoking rates and the design of future smoking control policies require the assessment of current systems. Numerous studies have examined the effects of an increase in cigarette taxes as well as the effects of smoking control
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