We analyze data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 on high school completion, smoking, and obesity. First, we investigate whether GED recipients differ from other high school graduates in their smoking and obesity behaviors. Second, we explore whether the relationships between schooling and these health‐related behaviors are sensitive to controlling for background and ability measures. Third, we estimate instrumental variables models. Our results suggest that the returns to high school completion may include less smoking but the health returns to GED receipt are much smaller. We find little evidence that high school completion is associated with less obesity.

This paper reexamines whether higher cigarette taxes will substantially reduce youth smoking. We study the impact of taxes during exactly the period in adolescence in which most smokers start their habits. We find weak or nonexistent tax effects in models of the onset of smoking between eighth and twelfth grades, models of the onset of heavy smoking between eighth and twelfth grades, and discrete‐time hazard models that include state fixed effects. We also provide a new perspective on the relationship between smoking and schooling: students who eventually drop out of school are already more likely to smoke in the eighth grade.