Abstract
Using recently available data spanning four decades, this paper examines the determinants of smoking prevalence in Japan. Main contributions include (i) examining differences across demographics; (ii) studying the effect of intra-household spousal economic power on smoking; and (iii) providing evidence on the efficacy of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). Results show that higher cigarette prices are more effective at reducing smoking prevalence among males than females, with significant differences across age groups. Greater economic prosperity and FCTC also deter male smoking, as does a higher relative income share of the wife in the household.
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Notes
According to projections by the International Monetary Fund, “By 2025, there will be roughly one elderly person for every two persons of working age, which will leave Japan with a higher old-age dependency ratio than any other major industrial country”, (http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2001/03/muhleise.htm).
See JT (2009).
According to the manual for investigation of smoking rates implemented by JT, no distinction was made between cigarettes and other types of tobacco. Thus, we take cigarette prices to proxy for overall tobacco prices or alternately, one could envision the smoking rates to be capturing mostly cigarette smoking.
The data for the monthly incomes is obtained from the Annual Household Consumption Survey released by the MIC, and is available for different age groups based on the age of household head, corresponding to the age groups.
Further, the level of aggregation in the data prevents us from identifying individual smokers and classifying them based on gender and other individual attributes. Availability of micro-level details could enable one to consider additional aspects of gender smoking differences.
The CPI for general goods is used as the deflator.
Relative significance of male smoking determinants was also found in the case of Taiwan by Lee et al. (2004).
Relatively greater effectiveness of smoking control initiatives in the elderly has also been found for the United States (Goel (2008)).
In general, it is not easy to do an overall cost-benefit analysis of implementing gender- and age-specific smoking-control policies. Future technological advances might enable governments to better target certain groups of smokers, while at the same time reducing related monitoring and compliance costs.
We thank a referee for suggesting these extensions.
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Acknowledgments
Zhang acknowledges the hospitality of the Department of Economics at Illinois State University during a sabbatical leave that made work on this research possible. We thank three referees for useful comments.