IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/27334.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Cities and Smoking

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Darden

Abstract

In 1956, 52% of urban men and 42% of rural men smoked cigarettes. By 2010, the disparity had flipped: 24.7% of urban men and 30.6% of rural men smoked. Smoking remains the greatest preventable cause of mortality in the United States, and understanding the underlying causes of place-specific differences in behavior is crucial for policy aimed at reducing regional inequality. Using geocoded data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, I estimate a dynamic model that captures smoking behavior, location decisions, and education over thirty years. Simulation of the estimated model demonstrates that selection on permanent unobserved variables that are correlated with smoking cessation, both in native populations and in those who migrate between rural and urban areas, explains 62.8$\%$ of the urban/rural smoking disparity. Alternatively, differential tobacco control policies explain only 7.3% of the urban/rural smoking disparity, which suggests that equalizing cigarette taxes across regions may fail to bridge gaps in behavior and health. This paper emphasizes that rural smoking disparities are largely driven by who selects into rural communities.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Darden, 2020. "Cities and Smoking," NBER Working Papers 27334, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:27334
    Note: EH
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w27334.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richelle L. Winkler & Kenneth M. Johnson, 2016. "Moving Toward Integration? Effects of Migration on Ethnoracial Segregation Across the Rural-Urban Continuum," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 53(4), pages 1027-1049, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Albert Sabater & Gemma Catney, 2019. "Unpacking Summary Measures of Ethnic Residential Segregation Using an Age Group and Age Cohort Perspective," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 35(1), pages 161-189, February.
    2. Darden, Michael E., 2021. "Cities and Smoking," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    3. Selod, Harris & Shilpi, Forhad, 2021. "Rural-urban migration in developing countries: Lessons from the literature," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    4. Danlin Yu & Chuanglin Fang, 2022. "How Neighborhood Characteristics Influence Neighborhood Crimes: A Bayesian Hierarchical Spatial Analysis," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(18), pages 1-16, September.
    5. Daniel T. Lichter & Kenneth M. Johnson, 2020. "A Demographic Lifeline? Immigration and Hispanic Population Growth in Rural America," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 39(5), pages 785-803, October.
    6. Barrett A. Lee & Gregory Sharp, 2017. "Ethnoracial Diversity across the Rural-Urban Continuum," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 672(1), pages 26-45, July.
    7. Chi, Guangqing & Ho, Hung Chak, 2018. "Population stress: A spatiotemporal analysis of population change and land development at the county level in the contiguous United States, 2001–2011," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 128-137.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:27334. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.