Session: Youth & Smoking
Room: Hollister 306
Time: Mon 10:15-11:45

Presenter: Young Kyung Do (Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore. Program in Health Services and Systems Research)

Discussant: Donald Kenkel (Cornell University)

Abstract

Youth smoking prevalence is increasing in many Asian countries. Although previous studies have identified a number of individual and family factors associated with youth smoking, little attention has been paid to economic factors among youths themselves. Several cross-sectional studies have shown an association between adolescents’ personal income and smoking, however, these studies have not been able to account for individual heterogeneity that may differ between smokers and non-smokers. Moreover, they do not address whether the increase in smoking is due to an income effect (i.e., more money available to buy cigarettes) or an employment effect where youth begin smoking due to increased exposure through the workplace.
We use the 2003-2007 Korea Youth Panel Study to estimate the effect of income on youth smoking initiation. Because the data captures income from employment and allowance, we can separately quantify the impact of each source of income on smoking initiation. Using fixed effects methods that control for individual heterogeneity, we separately test whether youth with higher incomes from either employment or allowance are more likely to smoke. We hypothesize that allowance will not be associated with increased youth smoking, but that earned income will be associated with higher youth smoking rates. In other words, we hypothesize that it is the employment effect, and not the income effect that increases youth smoking rates.
Results reveal that income earned from employment (or having any employment) is positively associated with youth smoking whereas allowance income is not. Although we cannot rule out that unmeasured factors may be promoting both youth employment and smoking uptake, these results reveal that employed youth are at higher risk for smoking initiation in South Korea, suggesting that workplaces that hire youth may be an appropriate target for anti-smoking interventions.

Key Terms

Youth, Smoking, Income, Employment, Asia

Authors:

Young Kyung Do (Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore. Program in Health Services and Systems Research) and Eric Finkelstein (Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore. Program in Health Services and Systems Research)