Abstract:Background/aims: A debate is currently underway about the FDA's methods for evaluating anti-tobacco regulation. In particular, the US government requires a costbenefit analysis for significant new regulations, which has led the FDA to consider potential lost subjective well-being (SWB) of ex-smokers as a cost of any proposed anti-tobacco policy. This practice, which significantly limits regulatory capacity, is premised on the assumption that there is in fact a loss in SWB among ex-smokers.
Methods:We analyze the relationship between SWB and smoking status using a longitudinal internet survey of over 5000 Dutch adults across five years. We control for socio-economic, demographic and health characteristics, and in a contribution to the literature we additionally control for two potential confounding personality characteristics, habitual use of external substances and sensitivity to stress. In another contribution, we estimate panel fixed effects models that additionally control for unobservable time-invariant characteristics.
Results:We find strong suggestive evidence that ex-smokers do not suffer a net loss in SWB. We also find no evidence that the change in SWB of those who quit smoking under stricter tobacco control policies is different from those who quit under a more relaxed regulatory environment. Furthermore, our cross-sectional estimates suggest that the increase in SWB from quitting smoking is not only statistically significant but also of a meaningful magnitude.
Conclusion:In sum, we find no empirical support for the proposition that exsmokers suffer lower net subjective well-being compared to when they were smoking.Key words: smoking status, cessation, subjective well-being Word count: 3983
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What This Study AddsWhat is known: Many smokers fear their subjective well-being will fall if they quit smoking. The FDA's regulatory impact analysis assumes a fall in subjective well-being from policy-induced smoking cessation and proposes discounting the calculated benefits from tobacco control policies accordingly.What important gaps in knowledge exist: Existing theory cannot unambiguously predict whether subjective well-being will rise or fall with smoking cessation. Empirical studies of the welfare effects of tobacco control policies yield mixed results. A limited literature that focuses on changes in individual subjective wellbeing associated with smoking status generally provides suggestive evidence that well-being increases after cessation, but these studies have been methodologically limited by the potential existence of unobservable confounding personality characteristics and reverse causality.
What this study adds: In an advance over previous studies, we control for many more socio-economic, demographic and health-related factors, and also for two potential confounding underlying personality characteristics, a tendency towards habitual use of external substances and a sensitivity to stress. This paper is also the first study in this literature to estimate panel data fixed effects model...