Tobacco Taxes and Starting and Quitting Smoking: Does the Effect Differ by Education?

This paper uses duration analysis to investigate the role of tobacco taxes in starting and quitting smoking. Applying a variety of parametric duration models, including a split population model, to a sample of Irish women, it finds that in general tobacco taxes do influence starting and quitting smoking in the expected direction. It also finds that the effect for starting differs by education but in a non-monotonic way, with the greatest effect for women with intermediate levels of education. The results for quitting suggest the greatest effect for women with the lowest level of education. These results are not changed when account is taken of unobserved heterogeneity.