title: Is Smoking Behavior Culturally Determined? Evidence from British Immigrants.
abstract: We exploit migration patterns from the UK to Australia and the US to investigate whether a person's decision to smoke is determined by culture. For each country, we use retrospective data to describe individual smoking trajectories over the life-course. For the UK, we use these trajectories to measure culture by cohort and cohort-age, and more accurately relative to the extant literature. Our proxy predicts smoking participation of second-generation British immigrants but not that of non-British immigrants and natives. Researchers can apply our strategy to estimate culture effects on other outcomes when retrospective or longitudinal data are available.
authors.affiliation: University of Macedonia, Department of Economic Science, 156 Egnatia Str., T.K. 54636, Thessaloniki, Greece, Tel.: +30 2310 891825.
authors.forename: Rebekka
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Christopoulou
authors.affiliation: The Ohio State University, Department of Human Sciences, 1787 Neil Avenue, 235B Campbell Hall, Columbus, OH 43201, USA ; NBER, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-5398, USA ; DIW Berlin, Mohrenstrasse 58, 10117 Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Dean R
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Lillard
keywords: Culture; Immigrant health; Smoking