TY  - JOUR
AU  - Cawley,John
AU  - Markowitz,Sara
AU  - Tauras,John
TI  - Lighting Up and Slimming Down: The Effects of Body Weight and Cigarette Prices on Adolescent Smoking Initiation
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 9561
PY  - 2003
Y2  - March 2003
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9561
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9561.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
John Cawley
3M24 MVR Hall
Department of Policy Analysis and Management
and Department of Economics
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY  14853
Tel: 607/255-0952
Fax: 607/255-4071
E-Mail: jhc38@cornell.edu

Sara Markowitz
Department of Economics
Emory University
1602 Fishburne Dr.
Atlanta, GA 30322
Tel: (404) 712-8167
E-Mail: sara.markowitz@emory.edu

John A. Tauras
University of Illinois at Chicago
Department of Economics (m/c 144)
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
601 S. Morgan Street, Room 707
Chicago, IL  60607
Tel: 312/413-3289
Fax: 312/996-3344
E-Mail: tauras@uic.edu
AB  - This paper examines the influence of body weight, body image, and cigarette prices in determining adolescent smoking initiation. Adolescents who desire to lose weight may initiate smoking as a method of appetite control. Such behavior may undermine the goals of tobacco control policies that seek to prevent smoking initiation. Using a nationally representative panel of adolescents, we show that smoking initiation is more likely among females who are overweight, who report trying to lose weight, or who describe themselves as overweight. In contrast, neither objective nor subjective measures of weight predict smoking initiation by males. Higher cigarette prices decrease the probability of smoking initiation among males but have no impact on female smoking initiation. These gender-specific differences may help explain the mixed and inconclusive evidence of the impact of price on smoking initiation found in previous literature
ER  -