TY - JOUR AU - Preston,Samuel H. AU - Stokes,Andrew AU - Mehta,Neil K. AU - Cao,Bochen TI - Projecting the Effect of Changes in Smoking and Obesity on Future Life Expectancy in the United States JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 18407 PY - 2012 Y2 - September 2012 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18407 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18407.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Samuel H. Preston School of Arts and Sciences 289 McNeil Building University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104-6298 Tel: 215/746-5396 Fax: 215/898-2124 E-Mail: spreston@sas.upenn.edu Andrew Stokes Population Studies Center McNeil Bldg, 3718 Locust Walk University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104 E-Mail: astokes@sas.upenn.edu Neil K. Mehta Emory University 1518 Clifton Road CNR 7035 Atlanta, GA 30322 E-Mail: nkmehta@emory.edu Bochen Cao Population Studies Center McNeil Bldg, 3718 Locust Walk University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104 E-Mail: caob@sas.upenn.edu M2 - featured in NBER digest on 2013-03-01 AB - We project the effects of declining smoking and increasing obesity on mortality in the United States over the period 2010-2040. Data on cohort behavioral histories are integrated into these projections. Future distributions of body mass indices are projected using transition matrices applied to the initial distribution in 2010. In addition to projections of current obesity, we project distributions of obesity when cohorts were age 25. To these distributions we apply death rates by current and age-25 obesity status observed in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1988-2006. Projections of the effects of smoking are based on observed relations between cohort smoking patterns and cohort death rates from lung cancer. We find that both changes in smoking and in obesity are expected to have large effects on mortality. For males, the reductions in smoking have larger effects than the rise in obesity throughout the projection period. 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. ER -