Do Smokers Respond to Health Shocks?

Abstract

Abstract-This paper reports the first effort to use data to evaluate how new information, acquired through exogenous health shocks, affects people's longevity expectations. We find that smokers react differently to health shocks than do those who quit smoking or never smoked. These differences, together with insights from qualitative research conducted along with the statistical analysis, suggest specific changes in the health warnings used to reduce smoking. Our specific focus is on how current smokers responded to health information in comparison to former smokers and nonsmokers. The three groups use significantly different updating rules to revise their assessments about longevity. The most significant finding of our study documents that smokers differ from persons who do not smoke in how information influences their personal longevity expectations. When smokers experience smoking-related health shocks, they interpret this information as reducing their chances of living to age 75 or more. Our estimated models imply smokers update their longevity expectations more dramatically than either former smokers or those who never smoked. Smokers are thus assigning a larger risk equivalent to these shocks. They do not react comparably to general health shocks, implying that specific information about smoking-related health events is most likely to cause them to update beliefs. It remains to be evaluated whether messages can be designed that focus on the link between smoking and health outcomes in ways that will have comparable effects on smokers' risk perceptions.

Health shocks and their long-lasting impact on health behaviors: Evidence from the 2009 H1N1 pandemic in Mexico

“…Finally, health shocks such as the swine flu, HIV or cancer must be considered "high-water marks" as indicated by Smith et al (2001) regarding the effectiveness of information campaigns. Therefore, the question remains whether it is indeed possible to design information messages that could alter and sustain health behaviors analogous to the effects of the H1N1 pandemic in Mexico, but without the obvious adverse consequences of a health emergency.…”

Rational expectations? An explorative study of subjective survival probabilities and lifestyle across Europe

“…Lower SSPs for smokers compared to non-smokers are reported, although among smokers little variation in SSPs was found according to intensity of smoking. 25 Schoenbaum 26 found that heavy smokers (≥25 cigarettes per day) fail to adjust their survival expectations downwards in line with life tables, while expectations of never, former and light smokers (<25 cigarettes per day) resembled actuarial predictions. Khwaja et al 27 also concluded that smokers expect to live longer than objective longevity figures predict.…”

The Effects of Parental Health Shocks on Adult Offspring Smoking Behavior and Self‐Assessed Health

“…Christakis and Fowler (2008) use these FHS cohorts to examine behaviors within social networks, which include parent-child interactions. 5 http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/tables/trends/cig_smoking/index.htm 6 SeeSmith et al (2001);Sloan et al (2003);Khwaja et al (2006);Arcidiacono et al (2007) for evidence that an individual responds to an own health shock by changing her smoking behavior. 7 This raw correlation between maternal smoking and adult offspring smoking varies with whether or not the mother (and father) is still alive; correlations between paternal smoking and adult offspring smoking, although smaller, are similarly divergent depending on the survival state of both parents.…”