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Research investigating the mutual causal relationship between addiction and education

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Ron Hai, associate professor of economics at Miami Patty College and the Alan Herbert School of Business, discusses people’s actions that influence human capital decisions and how they foster this accumulation and ultimately reduce poverty. We are investigating the policy.

High and James Heckman, the third most influential economist in the world according to Research Papers in Economics (RePEc), recently worked together to study the causal effect of young people’s tobacco addiction on their college choices. conducted joint research. Their research will be published in the Journal of Political Economy.

“This paper investigates the causal relationship between youth tobacco addiction and education, and provides a different way to look at this intersection,” said High. “It is well known that there is a negative correlation, but the question is how much does smoking, or any kind of negative or addictive behavior, influence educational choices?

“Everything is connected when we make lifelong choices. Smoking is a decision, and going to college is a decision. Individual decisions about addiction are independent of decisions about investing in human capital. That is not the case,” Hai added.

Human capital accumulation is essential to living a prosperous life and is an important pathway for young people from low socio-economic backgrounds seeking to escape poverty. In this regard, Mr. Hai emphasized that one of the most commonly accepted benefits of education is that it increases people’s income over time, which is good for society. But she stressed that research has revealed other benefits as well.

If we can increase education, we can reduce smoking, which has many negative effects. The causal effect of education on smoking is an additional benefit of education.

The study also investigated the causal effect of smoking addiction on education. Smoking addiction has a negative impact on young people’s time preferences and schooling preferences.

“Our finding of reverse causality, where smoking reduces education, is novel. The main policy implication of our results is that policies aimed at reducing youth smoking may require increased investment in education. By promoting this, we can bring further benefits,” said Mr. Hai.

High was working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago when he met Heckman, who is known for his empirical research in labor economics and the effectiveness of early childhood education programs and won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2000. Ta. The two economists have worked together in the past and plan to continue working together.

This study focused on a cohort of young adults born between 1982 and 1984 who started smoking and their decisions about whether to attend college. The study concluded that if young people between the ages of 15 and 30 (the period when they decide whether to attend college) could be prevented from starting to smoke, their college attendance would increase by 2 percentage points.

The same model and empirical methods can be used in future studies, High emphasized.

“Going forward, my research will have many implications for other types of addictive harmful behaviors and their impact on educational investment. It’s possible,” she said. “These harmful addictive behaviors can influence educational decisions, and our model framework can be applied to their analysis.”

High’s research found that the negative effects of smoking addiction on education primarily affected young people at the median in terms of cognitive ability and low non-cognitive skills such as self-control. As they strive to accumulate human capital and overcome their circumstances, their decisions regarding smoking addiction have a significant impact on their chances of success.

“Young people with low self-control are at great risk if they develop bad habits,” says High. “This population is highly vulnerable to derailment from a successful life. Harmful behaviors such as smoking addiction can reduce human capital accumulation. This is extremely important. , which has many implications for policy.”

Her collaboration with Heckman led her to further focus on the interaction between human capital and health behaviors such as addiction.

“This is a common interest and an area where I can contribute and it’s a good place to be,” she said. “My concern about inequality led me to become interested in effective policies that promote human capital accumulation and reduce poverty.”

Provided by University of Miami

Citation: Research investigating the reciprocal causal relationship between addiction and education (October 23, 2024), October 23, 2024 https://phys.org/news/2024-10-reciprocal-causal-Effects-addiction Retrieved from .html

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