The Demand for Cigarettes as Derived from the Demand for Weight Loss: A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation

Abstract

This paper offers an economic model of smoking and body weight and provides new empirical evidence on the extent to which the demand for cigarettes is derived from the demand for weight loss. In the model, smoking causes weight loss in addition to having direct utility benefits and direct health consequences. It predicts that some individuals smoke for weight loss and that the practice is more common among those who consider themselves overweight and those who experience greater disutility from excess weight. We test these hypotheses using nationally representative data in which adolescents are directly asked whether they smoke to control their weight. We find that, among teenagers who smoke frequently, 46% of girls and 30% of boys are smoking in part to control their weight. As predicted by the model, this practice is significantly more common among those who describe themselves as too fat and among groups that tend to experience greater disutility from obesity. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for tax policy; specifically, the demand for cigarettes is less price elastic among those who smoke for weight loss, all else being equal. Public health efforts to reduce smoking initiation and encourage cessation may wish to design campaigns to alter the derived nature of cigarette demand, especially among adolescent girls.

Obesity and Smoking: can we Kill Two Birds with one Tax?

“…Outcome (i) describes such a situation, in which an overweight agent is already underconsuming food and smokes ‘too much’ in order to maintain his or her body weight under control. This theoretical result is consistent with the evidence of those people who are overweight and declare they initiated smoking, even if they recognized it is harmful, to control their body weight (Cawley et al , ). Notably, this result emerges only when smoking has a metabolic effect on body weight ( ϵ > 0), which rationalizes its use as a sort of dieting device.…”

“…In this baseline model, we show the conditions under which the demand for smoking can be partially imputed to the demand for weight control. This result rationalizes the empirical finding that smoking initiation is sometimes driven by the desire to reduce appetite and control body weight and, analogously, that fear of gaining body weight plays an important role in the decision (not) to quit smoking (Moran et al , ; Cawley et al , ; Spring et al , ). We also show that a variety of unhealthy behaviors can be optimal, including situations in which a person smokes, is overweight, and is restraining food consumption, or smokes, is underweight and overeats even if the agent fully takes into account present and future consequences of his or her current behavior.…”

Calorie Labeling in Chain Restaurants and Body Weight: Evidence from New York

“…As discussed above, in addition to demand-side changes, supply-side responses to calorie labeling laws may also explain a portion of the estimated impact of calorie labeling on body weight. 42 Recent work indicates that the demand for cigarettes is derived from the demand for weight loss (Cawley et al, 2016) and that smoking has a causal impact on BMI (Courtemanche et al, 2016b). 43 Similarly, I find that the estimated effects of calorie labeling on someday (coef À0.009, s.e.…”

Pleiotropy-robust Mendelian Randomization

“…The relationship between smoking and BMI has received considerable attention in the literature 34,35,36,37,38 , and from these studies Wehby et al (2012) 37 used MR to assess the causal effect of CPD on BMI. In existing GWAS, the SNPs that are robustly associated with smoking measures can mostly be traced back to nicotine dependence.…”