SMOKING, SELF-SELECTION AND ABSENTEEISM

How much, if any, does smoking contribute to absenteeism? Separate sam ples of employed men and women are drawn front the 1986 wave of the Pa nel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to answer this question. The 1986 wave is the most recent one with information on smoking. In the first analysis, single equation Tobit regressions are run explaining the abs ence rate. Independent variables include a binary smoking variable tog ether with others for age, race, marital status, and so on. In the sin gle equation models, smoking appeared to raise absence rates by 42 and 232 percent for women and men, respectively. In the second analysis, decomposition techniques, which also adjust for smoking and employment hazard rates, are applied to four separate samples of smokers, non-sm okers, men, and women. The decomposition techniques lowered these diff erentials. Smoking appears to make a moderate contribution to absentee ism for men, but only a slight contribution for women. The decompositi on suggests that it is the observed and unobserved personal characteri stics of female smokers that account for most of the simple positive c orrelations between absenteeism and smoking among women found in the s ingle equation models.