Do cigarette taxes deter youth smoking? Evidence from Turkey

In this paper, we examine how cigarette taxation affects youth smoking initiation in Turkey, using data from the 2017 Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS) to create a pseudo-longitudinal sample of 11- to 17-year-olds. Using Cox proportional hazard models with time-varying covariates for taxes and prices, we find that a higher cigarette tax burden and higher real cigarette prices significantly reduce the risk that an adolescent will start smoking. While social influences, such as parental or teacher smoking, increase the likelihood of smoking initiation, higher parental education lowers it. These results are robust to alternative specifications, including split-population survival models. Our findings indicate that increasing cigarette taxes is effective in curbing youth smoking and that interventions targeting social and educational factors also play important roles.

Keywords: Cigarette taxation, youth smoking initiation, tobacco control policy, survival analysis

JEL classification: I12, H23, C41, I18

Countries covered: Turkey