How unemployment influences smoking behavior  [15.04.18]

Hohenheim-Tübingen research team analyzed German statistics

[Translate to English:] Foto: Pxhere

Original Study

Kaiser M1, Reutter M2, Sousa-Poza A1, Strohmaier K3. Smoking and local unemployment: Evidence from Germany. Econ Hum Biol. 2018 Mar 1;29:138-147. doi: 10.1016/j.ehb.2018.02.004. [Epub ahead of print]

  1. University of Hohenheim, Institute for Health Care and Public Management, Stuttgart, Germany.
  2. University of Hohenheim, Department of Economics, Econometrics and Empirical Economics, Stuttgart, Germany. Electronic address: mirjam_reutter@uni-hohenheim.de.
  3. University of Tuebingen, Department of Economics, Public Economics, Tuebingen, Germany.

Abstract

In this paper, we use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel to investigate the effect of macro-economic conditions (in the form of local unemployment rates) on smoking behavior. The results from our panel data models, several of which control for selection bias, indicate that the propensity to become a smoker increases significantly during an economic downturn, with an approximately 0.7 percentage point increase for each percentage point rise in the unemployment rate. Conversely, conditional on the individual being a smoker, cigarette consumption decreases with rising unemployment rates, with a one percentage point increase in the regional unemployment rate leading to a decrease in consumption up to 0.8 percent.


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[Translate to English:] Foto: Pxhere