Is it time to quit? Smoking persistence and self-rated health

Abstract

This study evaluates the impact of smoking on self-rated health using a British cohort born in 1970 that was followed through adult life. Records were taken for this dataset many times; individual self-rated health was first recorded in 1996 at age 26, and afterward at ages 30, 34, and 42. The smoking rate over time determined membership in the groups of current-smokers, never-smokers, and former-smokers. Estimates showed that the current-smokers group produced an increase in the probability of being in poor health with respect to never-smokers of about 10 percentage points in the long term. This result was also consistent when we used former-smokers as the control group, or other model specifications. The baseline estimates were not contradicted by robustness checks and policy implications of these results were discussed.