Smoking habits in Mexico: Upward and downward comparisons of economic statusLucio Esposito, Shatakshee Dhongde and Christopher Millett Review of Development Economics, 2021, vol. 25, issue 3, 1558-1575 Abstract: While experimental and behavioral economics have extensively studied the role of both upward and downward comparisons of economic status, the latter have been largely neglected in secondary data studies. The scarce existing evidence shows mixed results and is essentially limited to analyses of subjective well‐being in high‐income countries. Using nationally representative data from Mexico with almost 45,000 personal records, we disentangle the role of absolute wealth, relative deprivation, and relative affluence as explanatory variables for smoking behavior. We find robust evidence of greater smoking at higher levels of absolute achievement and relative deprivation and lower smoking at higher levels of relative affluence. Results hold for a variety of indicators of smoking habits, reflecting both smoking prevalence and intensity. Compared to men, we find that women tend to have stronger associations between the three facets of economic status and smoking prevalence. Results are robust to the use of alternative functional forms and reference groups for the measurement of relative deprivation and relative affluence. Date: 2021 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:rdevec:v:25:y:2021:i:3:p:1558-1575 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Review of Development Economics is currently edited by E. Kwan Choi More articles in Review of Development Economics from Wiley Blackwell |
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