Christopher:
I read your interesting paper "Smoking, Drinking, and Income". At the
end of the paper you write: "smoking causes significantly larger losses
in income than either drinking abstention or heavy drinking, but is is
difficult to hypothesize plausible causal mechanisms which could
generate effects of this magnitude." Have you seen "Cigarette Smokers
as Job Risk Takers" by Kip Viscusi and Joni Hersh in *The Review of
Econ. & Stat.*, May 2001? Viscusi and Hersh find that smokers are more
hazard prone than nonsmokers; they are much more likely to get injured
on the job and at home. This raises the cost of employing a smoker and
employers adjust their wages accordingly. They also find that smokers
take more higher-risk jobs than nonsmokers, but get paid less for doing
them. I don't have the article at hand, so I can't quote the percent
difference in wages that they say this accounts for, but I recall that
it was substantial.
Yours,
Asa Janney
Applied Statistical Associates, Inc.
Oakton, Va.
--
The socialist society would have to forbid capitalist acts between
consenting adults.
-- Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 1974
