TY  - JOUR
AU  - Shetty,Kanaka D.
AU  - DeLeire,Thomas
AU  - White,Chapin
AU  - Bhattacharya,Jayanta
TI  - Changes in U.S. Hospitalization and Mortality Rates Following Smoking Bans
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14790
PY  - 2009
Y2  - March 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14790
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14790.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Kanaka Shetty
E-Mail: kshetty@rand.org

Thomas DeLeire
La Follette School of Public Affairs
University of Wisconsin-Madison
1225 Observatory Drive
Madison, WI 53706
Tel: 608-263-6998
Fax: 608/263-2820
E-Mail: deleire@wisc.edu

Chapin White
Congressional Budget Office
E-Mail: chapin.white@cbo.gov

Jay Bhattacharya
117 Encina Commons
Center for Primary Care
and Outcomes Research
Stanford University
Stanford, CA  94305-6019
Tel: 650/736-0404
Fax: 650/723-1919
E-Mail: jay@stanford.edu
AB  - U.S. state and local governments are increasingly restricting smoking in public places. This paper analyzes nationally representative databases, including the Nationwide Inpatient Sample, to compare short-term changes in mortality and hospitalization rates in smoking-restricted regions with control regions. In contrast with smaller regional studies, we find that workplace bans are not associated with statistically significant short-term declines in mortality or hospital admissions for myocardial infarction or other diseases. An analysis simulating smaller studies using subsamples reveals that large short-term increases in myocardial infarction incidence following a workplace ban are as common as the large decreases reported in the published literature.
ER  -