Tobacco Education Program Spending and Tobacco Use among Adolescents

This article measures the effect of tobacco education program spending on adolescent tobacco use. We model how corruption influences the policy maker’s decision on subsidies that benefit firms to the detriment of education spending and its differential effect by gender. We estimate the effect of tobacco education program spending, instrumented by our corruption proxy, on adolescent tobacco use. More tobacco education program spending significantly increases the probability of never smoking among all adolescents but reduces the frequency of smoking only among adolescent females. One plausible explanation is that females have a more inelastic marginal utility of health than males.