RISK BELIEFS AND SMOKING BEHAVIOR

We analyze smoking risk beliefs and smoking behavior using individual data from 1997 for the United States and 1998 for Massachusetts. Smokers and adults more generally overestimate the lung cancer risks of smoking and the mortality risks and life expectancy loss. Higher risk beliefs decrease the probability of starting to smoke and increase the probability of quitting among those who begin. Better educated smokers have lower and more accurate risk beliefs, but education decreases the probability of smoking. Higher state cigarette taxes correlate with risk beliefs but not with smoking status. The uninsured are especially likely to remain current smokers. ( JEL I12, I18, D80)     

Measures of Mortality Risks

Different risks of death are not equivalent because of differences in timing. This paper develops measures of mortality risks that recognize the probability of death, the duration of life lost, and the role of discounting. These adjustments lead to a substantial reordering of the major causes of death. Recognition of duration-related issues explains much of the public's misperception of mortality risk probabilities, which may reflect duration-related concerns rather than biases in risk beliefs. Our estimates suggest that in forming their risk beliefs the public discounts years of life lost at a rate from 3.3–12.4 percent. Standardization of lifetimes at risk also alters the relative efficacy of regulatory policies for which we provide a variety of cost-effectiveness measures.