Smoking and economic damages

Most studies show smoking will reduce a person's life expectancy by about 10 years. Depending on the case, however the reduced life expectancy may not have a significant impact on the economic damages in the case.

Below is a discussion of frequently cited studies on smoker's mortality (thanks Beth Berridge) from an forensic economics listserve

The "top guy" who has published a number of articles on smoking mortality is Robert A. Hummer. A key article with him as lead author is "Adult Mortality Differentials Associated with Cigarette Smoking in the USA", Population Research and Policy Review 17:285-304, 1998.

This article examines all-cause mortality - this is important because most articles tend to focus on deaths from lung cancer or from cardiovascular disease, which is misleading because smoking results in elevated mortality for many other reasons. The authors do not develop life expectancy values, but they do calculate mortality rates by age and sex and underlying cause of death.

A person familiar with actuarial concepts could use this article to develop a life expectancy calculation for a "current heavy smoker" or for a "current light smoker". In this calculation, the smoker's mortality rates would be rated up for the all-cause mortality (total) shown in the appropriate tables from pages 292-293.