title: The effect of smoking habit changes on body weight: Evidence from the UK.
abstract: This paper evaluates the causal relationship between smoking and body weight through two waves (2004-2006) of the British Household Panel Survey. We model the effect of changes in smoking habits, such as quitting or reducing, and account for the heterogeneous responses of individuals located at different points of the body mass distribution by quantile regression. We test our results by means of a large set of control groups and investigate their robustness by using the changes-in-changes estimator and accounting for different thresholds to define smoking reductions. Our results reveal the positive effect of quitting smoking on weight changes, which is also found to increase in the highest quantiles, whereas the decision to reduce smoking does not affect body weight.
authors.affiliation: Department of Political Science, Perugia, Italy.
authors.forename: Luca
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Pieroni
authors.affiliation: Department of Political Science, Perugia, Italy. Electronic address: luca.salmasi@unipg.it.
authors.forename: Luca
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Salmasi
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D015992:Body Mass Index; D001835:Body Weight / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012907:Smoking / Q000191:economics / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000523:psychology; D016540:Smoking Cessation / Q000191:economics / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D006113:United Kingdom; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Changes-in-changes; Difference-in-differences; Nonlinear quantile treatment effects; Overweight and obesity