Smoking and wage penalty in the Brazilian labor market

Abstract

Esse artigo investiga a heterogeneidade da repercussão de hábitos pessoais não saudáveis, expressa pelo o uso do cigarro, sobre a produtividade do trabalho no Brasil. Baseado na Pesquisa Especial de Tabagismo integrante da Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios 2008, os principais modelos empíricos são desenvolvidos por meio de regressão quantílica com variáveis instrumentais. Os resultados encontrados explicitam que fumantes, independentemente dos modelos condicionados para a mé- dia ou por quantil com e sem variáveis instrumentais, apresentam menor rendimento do trabalho. Assim, a penalização salarial para fumantes com controle para endogeneidade varia de 15,2% a 36,5% ao longo da distribuição condicional dos rendimentos individuais.

The wage penalty of smoking in Brazil: evidence from the Special Survey on Tobacco Addiction

“…We do not reject the hypothesis that smoking reduces earnings, i.e., smoking really harms wages. Our results are in line with those recently presented by Almeida & Araújo Júnior (2017), but our estimates are higher, i.e., men (women) who smoke earn 29.7% (24.2%) less than other non-smokers workers. Furthermore, when the wage differential between smokers and non-smokers were decomposed, we saw that a significant part of this difference is due to observable characteristics for both men and women.…”

“…The relationship between cigarette demand and income already evidenced in the literature (Levine et al 1997) is a source of endogeneity between smoking and earnings. The endogeneity occurs because someone with a high intertemporal discount rate invests less in human capital and would be more predisposed to smoking (Almeida & Araújo Júnior 2017). As a result, the negative effect of such preferences on current consumption could be attributed to the fact that the individual is a smoker.…”

“…Recently, Almeida & Araújo Júnior (2017) found, using a instrumental quantile regression approach, that brazilians workers who smoke receive 15.2% to 36.5% less than others workers. Our study is based on the same Special Survey on Tobacco Addiction, but we consider gender differences and exploit a different set of instrumental variables.…”

Smoking effects on labor income: new evidence for Brazil

“…According to Almeida and Araújo Júnior (2017), the adapted Mincer expression was represented, in a generic way, by:in which: Wi is the logarithm of the wage; KiH is the vector of measures of the element health of the capital human; Ki is the vector of measures not associated with human capital health (such as schooling and experience); Xi is the vector of other covariates (age, race, gender, etc. ); ξi is the error term.…”

“…While the subject has been extensively explored in existing literature, there is a limited number of contributions within the Brazilian context, notably by Almeida and Araújo Júnior (2017), Justus, Sant’Anna, Davanzo, and Moreira (2019), and Uhr, Parfitt, Uhr, and Ely (2021). These studies consistently suggest that smokers face wage penalties in the Brazilian labor market, albeit to varying degrees.…”