Free DP Download 12 March 2020 - EFFECTS OF PASSIVE SMOKING ON PRENATAL AND INFANT DEVELOPMENT: Lessons from the Past
Thursday, March 12, 2020
EFFECTS OF PASSIVE SMOKING ON CHILDREN’S DEVELOPMENT: Historical evidence from Italy
Carlo Ciccarelli, Gianni De Fraja, Daniela Vuri
CEPR DP No. 14471 | 05 March 2020
A new CEPR study by Carlo Ciccarelli, Gianni De Fraja and Daniela Vuri reveals that exposure to passive smoking of yet-to-be-born and very young children has a strong negative effect on their height as adults.
The study analyses rich historical data from Italian provinces, 1855 to 1910, to determine the effect of being exposed to passive smoking in one’s first year of life on one’s height as adult. In 19th century Italy, the effects of smoking on health were not known, and tobacco was not an inferior good. This allows the authors to disentangle the effect on foetuses and infants of smoking from that of other indicators of social and economic conditions.
The datasets record precise information on the per capita consumption of tobacco products, the heights of twenty-year old conscripts in the second half of the 19th century Italy, and other relevant controls. The results show a strong negative effect of smoking in the period before and after birth on height at age 20.
Figure 3: Provincial disparities 1875-1890
Note: Choropleth maps of the main variables included in the regressions. The maps report provincial averages of the variables evaluated over the period 1875-1890. Sources: Tobacco, literacy, and income from Ciccarelli and De Fraja (2014), heights from A’Hearn et al. (2009), child mortality from Pozzi (2000).
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