Parental Income and Children's Smoking Behaviour: Evidence from the British Household Panel Survey

IFS Working Papers No. 05/10

15 Pages Posted: 27 May 2005

See all articles by Laura Blow

Laura Blow

Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS)

Andrew Leicester

Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS)

Frank Windmeijer

University of Bristol - Department of Economics; University of Bristol - Leverhulme Centre for Market and Public Organisation (CMPO); Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) - Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice

Date Written: May 2005

Abstract

Does money matter? When investigating health behaviour, research often finds a strong positive association between income and healthy behaviour. This could however be due to individual characteristics that determine both income and health investment and is not necessarily due to the role of money per se. In this study we look at this relationship over the generations by studying the association between parental income and children's prevalence to smoke in Britain using data from the British Household Panel Survey and British Youth Survey. We find an inverse relation between parental income and children's smoking prevalence, but when looking at within household changes by comparing sibling's smoking status differences at the same age, we find instead a positive effect. This indicates that within household increases in income lead to an increased probability of smoking of a younger child.

Keywords: Child smoking, parental income, panel data

JEL Classification: C23, I12

Suggested Citation

Blow, Laura and Leicester, Andrew and Windmeijer, Frank, Parental Income and Children's Smoking Behaviour: Evidence from the British Household Panel Survey (May 2005). IFS Working Papers No. 05/10, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=729005 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.729005

Laura Blow

Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) ( email )

7 Ridgmount Street
London, WC1E 7AE
United Kingdom

Andrew Leicester

Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) ( email )

7 Ridgmount Street
London, WC1E 7AE
United Kingdom

Frank Windmeijer (Contact Author)

University of Bristol - Department of Economics ( email )

8 Woodland Road
Bristol BS8 ITN
United Kingdom

University of Bristol - Leverhulme Centre for Market and Public Organisation (CMPO) ( email )

12 Priory Road
Bristol BS8 1TN
United Kingdom

Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) - Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice

7 Ridgmount Street
London WC1E 7AE, WC1E 7 AE
United Kingdom

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