This paper reports the first test of how exogenous health shocks impact people's longevity expectations. The analysis exploits the panel structure of the Health and Retirement Study and tests whether smokers, former smokers and those who never smoked react differently to serious, smoking related health shocks. The results support the conclusion that smokers have a different risk perception process. Smokers were only sensitive to their own smoking related illnesses while former smokers and those who never smoked react to a wider range of health related signals. These findings, along with related research on how smokers react to information messages, suggest that generalized messages about the hazards of smoking may be less effective than information about personal activity restrictions associated with smoking related diseases.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Duke University, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number
00-08.
Length: Date of creation: 2000 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:duk:dukeec:00-08
Contact details of provider: Postal: Department of Economics Duke University 213 Social Sciences Building Box 90097 Durham, NC 27708-0097 Phone: (919) 660-1800 Fax: (919) 684-8974 Web page: http://www.econ.duke.edu/
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Department of Economics Webmaster).
Find related papers by JEL classification: I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Production J14 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of the Elderly; Economics of the Handicapped
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)