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Do smokers respond to health shocks?

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Date
2001-11-01
Authors
Smith, VK
Taylor, DH
Sloan, FA
Johnson, FR
Desvousges, WH
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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 expec-tations 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.
Type
Journal article
Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/2127
Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1162/003465301753237759
Publication Info
Smith, VK; Taylor, DH; Sloan, FA; Johnson, FR; & Desvousges, WH (2001). Do smokers respond to health shocks?. Review of Economics and Statistics, 83(4). pp. 675-687. 10.1162/003465301753237759. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/2127.
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Scholars@Duke

Johnson

F. Reed Johnson

Professor in Population Health Sciences
F. Reed Johnson, PhD, has more than 40 years of academic and research experience in health and environmental economics. He has served on the faculties of several universities in the United States, Canada, and Sweden, and as Distinguished Fellow at Research Triangle Institute. He currently is Senior Research Scholar in the Duke Clinical Research Institute. As a staff member in the US Environmental Protection Agency’s environmental economics research program during the 1980s, Reed helped
Sloan

Frank A. Sloan

J. Alexander McMahon Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Health Policy and Management
Professor Sloan is interested in studying the subjects of health policy and the economics of aging, hospitals, health, pharmaceuticals, and substance abuse. He has received funding from numerous research grants that he earned for studies of which he was the principal investigator. His most recent grants were awarded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Center for Disease Control, the Pew Charitable Trust, and the National Institute on Aging. Titles of his projects include, “Why Mature S
Taylor

Donald H. Taylor Jr.

Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy
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