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Spousal Effects in Smoking Cessation: Matching, Learning, or Bargaining?

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Abstract

Previous research studying the correlation in smoking behavior between spouses has discounted the role of bargaining or learning. Using the Health and Retirement Study, which contains information on smoking cessation and spouse’s preferences, this paper presents an essential investigation of the impact of spousal bargaining or learning on the decision to cease smoking. We find that, regardless of gender, when one member of a couple ceases smoking this induces the other member to cease smoking through bargaining. Further, we find that women demonstrate either altruistic behavior toward a spouse who has suffered a health shock, or learning from their spouse’s health shock.

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Notes

  1. See Clark and Etilé [2006] for a well-developed literature review.

  2. Altruism suggests that an individual will change a behavior for altruistic reasons. Learning suggests that an individual will change a behavior after the individual learns about the behavior. If an individual quits smoking after their spouse suffers a health shock, this could be due to the latter or the former effect, as the former effect would be out of concern for the spouse and the latter would be due to the knowledge that further exposure is harming both the spouse and the individual.

  3. Recall that altruism and learning effects may not be mutually exclusive in the case of smoking cessation.

  4. As described previously, if matching occurred among the spouses on any time-invariant characteristics, such as race, education, or gender, this will be controlled for by η i as well. For this type of model, the standard errors must be clustered to account for the household.

  5. If the individual continues to smoke out of self-interest, this would include a situation in which the individual continues to smoke in response to the stress brought on by the spousal health shock.

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Acknowledgements

The manuscript has benefited from the assistance of Susan Averett, Jennifer Kohn, and two anonymous reviewers. The author wishes to acknowledge their insightful comments.

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McGeary, K. Spousal Effects in Smoking Cessation: Matching, Learning, or Bargaining?. Eastern Econ J 41, 40–50 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/eej.2013.34

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