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University of Miami: Study examines reciprocal causal effects of addiction and education

Rong Hai, an associate economics professor in the University of Miami Patti and Allan Herbert Business School, investigates people’s behaviors that influence human capital decisions and policies that promote this accumulation and ultimately reduce poverty. 

Hai and James Heckman, who according to Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) is the third most influential economist in the world, recently collaborated to study the causal effect of youth cigarette addiction on the choice to attend college. Their research has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Political Economy.


“The paper explores the causal relationship between youth cigarette addiction and education and offers a different way to look at the intersection,” Hai said. “The negative correlation has been well known, but the question is how much smoking—or any kind of adverse or addictive behavior—has on education choices. 


“When making lifetime choices, everything is tied together. Smoking is a decision, and going to college is a decision. An individual’s addiction decision is not independent of their decisions on human capital investment,” Hai added. 

Accumulating human capital is essential for living a flourishing life, and it is a critical channel for youth from lower socioeconomic backgrounds who seek to rise out of poverty. In this regard, Hai highlighted one of the most generally accepted benefits of education—that people earn more over time, which is good for society. Yet she emphasized that the research revealed other benefits as well.


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

This study also investigates the causal effects of smoking addiction on education. Smoking addiction negatively affects youth time preferences and preferences toward schooling.


“Our finding of reverse causality whereby smoking reduces education is novel. The main policy implication of our results is that policies that aim to reduce youth smoking also yield additional benefits by fostering increased investment in education,” Hai noted. 

Hai met Heckman, renowned for his empirical research in labor economics and scholarship on the efficacy of early childhood education programs and who won the 2000 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, while doing postdoctoral work at the University of Chicago. The two economists have collaborated previously and expect to continue to do so. 


This study focused on a cohort of youth born between 1982 and1984 who take up smoking and their decisions on whether to attend college. The research concluded that if youth between the ages of 15 and 30—a time when they are deciding whether to attend college—can be prevented from ever starting to smoke, their college attendance would increase by two percentage points. 


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