Philipp Huebler, Andreas Kucher
Ashes
to ashes, time to time - Parental time discounting and its
role in the intergenerational transmission of smoking
Abstract:
Intergenerational
correlations of risky health behaviors such as tobacco consumption are
well established. However, there is still limited empirical evidence
about the underlying process through which the transmission is driven.
This paper aims at analyzing parental time discounting and its role in
the intergenerational transmission of smoking. The analysis is based on
longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) for the
years 2006, 2008 and 2010. We use a linear panel regression model to
estimate the child’s likelihood of being a current smoker.
The
SOEP contains a great many of socio-economic characteristics and also
meaningful measures of individual discounting behavior, namely, general
patience and impulsivity. This enables us to distinguish between time
preference and self-control, respectively. We find significant effects
of time preference for both, mothers and fathers. That is, an
increasing level of patience of parents is associated with a lower
smoking probability of the child. Regarding self-control, only
father’s impulsivity has a similar decreasing impact.
Stratifying
the sample by gender reveals substantial mother-daughter, mother-son
and father-son effects. Additionally, we estimate the influence of
health-related mediating factors such as parental smoking and alcohol
consumption. It turns out that role modeling as well as time
discounting of the parents are highly relevant in this transmission
process.
JEL: D9, D10, I12, J13
Paper:
Paper available as pdf-file.
Beitrag Nr. 326, Volkswirtschaftliche Diskussionsreihe, Institut
für
Volkswirtschaftslehre der Universität Augsburg
Contact:
Philipp
Huebler, University of Augsburg, Department of Economics,
D-86135
Augsburg,
Germany, phone +49-821-598-4209, fax +49-821-598-4232,
email: philipp.huebler@wiwi.uni-augsburg.de
Andreas
Kucher, University of Augsburg, Department of Economics,
D-86135
Augsburg,
Germany, phone +49-821-598-4208, fax +49-821-598-4232,
email: andreas.kucher@wiwi.uni-augsburg.de
Bo.,
14.03.2016