NBER Paper Compares Changes in Smoking and Obesity Rates and Effects on Mortality

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) has issued a paper titled
“Projecting the Effect of Changes in Smoking and Obesity on Future Life
Expectancy in the United States.” Funded by the Social Security Administration
and a grant from the National Institute on Aging, the research applied
Markov modeling to National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys data
from 1999 to 2008 to conclude that reductions in smoking rates coupled with
increases in obesity will result in a gain of nearly one year of life expectancy
for men and just a quarter of a year’s gain for women. According to the
authors, “By 2040, male life expectancy at age 40 is expected to have gained
0.92 years from the combined effects. Among women, however, the two sets
of effects largely offset one another throughout the projection period, with a
small gain of 0.26 years expected by 2040.”

The researchers also project that by 2040, 47 percent of men and 51 percent
of women will be obese with morbid obesity constituting “a majority of obese
women by 2020 and thereafter.”