Smoking, Information and Education: The Royal College of Physicians and the New Public Health Movement

On March 7, 1962 the Royal College of Physicians published a report entitled Smoking and Health that made the causal link between smoking and lung cancer clear and explicit. Using a historical data set that contains information on smoking from 1958 to 1965, I find a decrease in smoking for those with more schooling after the report's publication. I do not find a difference in the effect for those with greater access to information (measured by TV ownership or newspaper readership). This suggests the education health gradient is more likely due to processing of information rather than access to information.