Is smoking behavior culturally determined? Evidence from British immigrants

•We show that culture determines smoking decisions.•Our measure of culture varies by age, calendar year, and across birth-cohorts.•Our measure is net of any shared variation in smoking patterns across countries.•When life-course data are available, our approach can be applied to other outcomes. We e...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of economic behavior & organization 2015-02, Vol.110, p.78-90
Main Authors: Christopoulou, Rebekka, Lillard, Dean R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Australia
Behavior
Cohorts
Culture
Decision analysis
Immigrant health
Immigrants
Literature
Migration
Noncitizens
Smoking
Social psychology
Studies
U.S.A
United Kingdom
Western Europe
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Summary:•We show that culture determines smoking decisions.•Our measure of culture varies by age, calendar year, and across birth-cohorts.•Our measure is net of any shared variation in smoking patterns across countries.•When life-course data are available, our approach can be applied to other outcomes. 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.
ISSN:0167-2681
1879-1751
DOI:10.1016/j.jebo.2014.12.014