Rising body weight, obesity and a declining smoking participation in the Netherlands Coincidence?

Abstract. Obesity is emerging as an epidemic health problem in many developed countries. Research by Chou, Grossman and Saffer point out several trends related to the increasing rate of obesity. One trend partly related to the rate of obesity discovered by Chou, Grossman and Saffer, is the decrease in smoking prevalence. Another study by Gruber and Frakes, investigating this relationship of obesity and smoking prevalence find the opposite. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate if such a relationship can be found in the Netherlands. This relationship is investigated by three different approaches. The first is by following the model of Chou, Grossman and Saffer as closely as possible. The second is by following the model of Gruber and Frakes as closely as possible. The third is by specifying an own model using quantile regression. All of the approaches indicate that such a relationship is not found in the Netherlands and even if significant results were found, the interpretation would be very difficult due to endogeneity bias.