The complementarity of teen smoking and drinking.
Teen drinkers are over twice as likely as abstainers to smoke cigarettes. This empirical study provides evidence of a robust complementarity between these health behaviors by exploiting the "cross-price" effects. The results indicate that the movement away from minimum legal drinking ages of 18 reduced teen smoking participation by 3 to 5%. The corresponding instrumental variable estimates suggest that teen drinking roughly doubles the mean probability of smoking participation. Similarly, higher cigarette taxes and reductions in teen smoking are associated with a lower prevalence of teen drinking. However, the results which rely on cigarette taxes for identification are estimated imprecisely.
Dee
T S
TS
Department of Economics, Swarthmore College, PA 19081, USA. tdee1@swarthmore.edu
D000293:Adolescent; D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000191:economics / Q000453:epidemiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D017059:Models, Econometric; D011336:Probability; D011640:Public Policy; D012307:Risk Factors; D012907:Smoking / Q000191:economics / Q000453:epidemiology*; D013660:Taxes; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology