The long‐term health effects of initiating smoking in adolescence: Evidence from a national longitudinal survey

Abstract

We estimate the long-term effect of initiating smoking in adolescence on a range of health outcomes later in life. We use the second wave (1996) and the fifth wave (2016–2018) of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) and estimate instrumental variables models with school-level fixed effects, where the instruments are the average rate of smoking among friends and the respondents’ perceptions about their friends’ smoking. We find that smoking in adolescence has a negative impact on 15 of the 28 self-reported, diagnosed, and self-identified health outcomes approximately 20 years later.

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