"We analyze data from the 1994-2002 waves of the British Household Panel Survey to explore the influence of parental smoking habits on their children's smoking decisions. In order to account for the potential endogeneity of parental smoking habits we use instrumental variable methods. We find...

The paper presents a statistical generalisation, to working families in the whole of Britain, of Rowntree's finding that absolute poverty declined dramatically in York between 1899 and 1936. We use poverty lines devised by contemporary social investigators and two relatively newly-discovered...

We use instrumental variable methods to investigate whether the impact of parental smoking habits on their children's smoking decisions is a causal one. We find evidence of same-sex role models in two-parent households: mothers play a crucial role in determining their daughters' smoking...