Long-term effects of female teachers on pupils’ smoking behaviour later in life

ABSTRACT

In Japan, teacher and student is randomly matched in the first year of elementary school. Under the quasi-natural experimental setting, I examine how learning in female teacher homeroom class in the elementary school influence pupils’ smoking behaviour after they become adult. I found that pupils are unlikely to smoke later in life if they belonged to female teacher homeroom class in pupil’s first year of school.

KEYWORDS:

• Smoking
• genders
• female teacher
• childhood
• elementary school

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Official cite of Ministry of Educations, Cultural, Sports, Science and Technology, JAPAN. https://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/koutou/shinkou/main5_a3.htm. Accessed on 11 January 2021.

² The exception is case of children with mental retardation.

³ ‘Report on School Basic Survey (various years)’

⁴ Those who entered elementary school in 1963 and in the Kyoto prefecture. We matched the ratio of female teachers in Kyoto, and 1965 is the year closest to 1963 in our sample.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the JSPS [the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research B / Grant].