eprintid: 10140719
rev_number: 23
eprint_status: archive
userid: 608
dir: disk0/10/14/07/19
datestamp: 2023-02-14 14:12:53
lastmod: 2023-10-13 12:16:13
status_changed: 2023-10-13 12:16:13
type: working_paper
metadata_visibility: show
creators_name: Adda, J
creators_name: Lechene, V
title: Smoking and Endogenous Mortality: Does Heterogeneity in Life Expectancy Explain Differences in Smoking Behaviour
ispublished: pub
divisions: UCL
divisions: B03
divisions: C03
divisions: F24
keywords: Health, Duration, Smoking, Selection, Mortality, Life Expectancy, Causality
note: This version is the version of record. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
abstract: This paper considers the identfication of the effect of tobacco on mortality. If individuals select into smoking according to some unobserved health characteristic, then estimates of the effect of tobacco on health that do not account for this are biased. We show that using information on mortality, morbidity and smoking, it is possible to control for this selection effect and obtain consistent estimates of the effect of smoking on mortality. We implement our method on Swedish data. We show that there is selection into smoking, and considerable dispersion around the average effect, so that health policies that aim at decreasing smoking prevalence and quantities smoked might have less effect in terms of average number of years of life gained than previously estimated. We also empirically show that selection into smoking has increased over the last fifty years with the availability of information on the dangers of smoking, so that future studies comparing smokers and non smokers will spuriously reveal a worsening effect of tobacco on health if they fail to control for selection.
date: 2004
date_type: published
publisher: University of Oxford, Department of Economics
official_url: https://ideas.repec.org/p/oxf/wpaper/184.html
oa_status: green
full_text_type: pub
language: eng
primo: open
primo_central: open_green
verified: verified_manual
elements_id: 85675
lyricists_name: Lechene, Valerie
lyricists_id: VLECH86
actors_name: Lechene, Valerie
actors_id: VLECH86
actors_role: owner
full_text_status: none
series: Economics Series Working Papers
number: 184
place_of_pub: Oxford, UK
book_title: Oxford Department of Economics Working Paper 184
citation:        Adda, J;    Lechene, V;      (2004)    Smoking and Endogenous Mortality: Does Heterogeneity in Life Expectancy Explain Differences in Smoking Behaviour.                    (Economics Series Working Papers  184). University of Oxford, Department of Economics: Oxford, UK.       Green open access