Smoking and Obesity Revisited: Evidence from Belarus

Aliaksandr Amialchuk, Kateryna Bornukova and Mir Ali

No 19, BEROC Working Paper Series from Belarusian Economic Research and Outreach Center (BEROC)

Abstract: It has been hypothesized that the rising obesity rates in many countries are an unintended consequence of anti-smoking policies. However, evidence of a causal effect of smoking on body weight is mixed. Using a large nationally representative survey from Belarus, we estimate the effect of the number of cigarettes smoked per day on individuals’ body mass index (BMI) and on the probability of being overweight and obese. We instrument smoking variable using cigarette prices and group-specific smoking rates. We find that smoking is negatively related to BMI, probability of overweight and obesity, and the magnitude of the estimated effects is comparable to the estimates from other countries. In addition, quantile regression analysis uncovers that the negative effect of smoking is higher at the higher percentiles of BMI distribution. Same differences in the effect are found using ordered probit regression analyses. Our results uncover a small negative effect of smoking on body size and obesity. These findings suggest that, while smoking cessation may lead to some weight gain among subjects of healthy weight and above healthy weight, the effects on obese subjects are small and should not be expected to significantly increase obesity prevalence.

Keywords: Belarus; smoking; obesity; body weight (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2012-10
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://eng.beroc.by/webroot/delivery/files/WP19_eng_Bornukova.pdf First version, 2012 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to eng.beroc.by:80 (No such host is known. )

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bel:wpaper:19

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in BEROC Working Paper Series from Belarusian Economic Research and Outreach Center (BEROC) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Svetlana Yakubovskaya ().