Intergenerational transmission of gender social norms and teenage smoking

Abstract

This paper provides evidence of different teenage-smoking dynamics between genders with social progression. In particular, we find that descending from more gender-equal societies makes girls relatively more prone to smoke than those from less gender-equal societies relative to their male counterparts. Using data from over 6,000 second-generation immigrant teenagers sharing culture and institutions from one host country (Spain) but coming from 45 different countries of ancestry, we find that the higher the degree of gender equality in the country of ancestry, the higher the likelihood that girls smoke relative to boys. Our result holds even after we control for parental, sibling, and peer smoking, as well as for country-of-ancestry indicators of economic development and the smoking gender gap, among others.