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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
 Posted - 07/24/2005 : 11:10:50
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Interesting article: http://www.gadsdentimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050724/ZNYT04/507240324/1011
Here are some of the highlights:
In a 2004 study, Professor Grossman, along with Shin-Yi Chou of Lehigh University and Inas Rashad of Georgia State, mined state-by-state behavioral surveys from 1984 to 1999 to get to the root causes of rising obesity. While they found that the prevalence of fast-food restaurants was responsible for most of the climb, they concluded that the decline in smoking accounted for about 20 percent of it. Over all, they found that "each 10 percent increase in the real price of cigarettes produces a 2 percent increase in the number of obese people, other things being equal."
Jonathan Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, didn't believe that the relationship between lower smoking and higher obesity rates was so direct. While people may gain weight when they quit smoking, they tend to shed those pounds later. "There's no evidence in the medical literature that quitting smoking will affect your weight over a long period of time," he said. And by themselves, the short-term weight gains associated with smoking shouldn't be enough to push masses of former smokers into obesity.
Professor Gruber, with the assistance of Michael Frakes, a Ph.D. student, analyzed the same numbers that Professors Grossman, Chou and Rashad did, but with different methodology. Rather than focusing on the way prices affected consumption, Professor Gruber looked at how people living in different states reacted when state cigarette taxes were sharply increased. He also ignored factors like the number of fast-food restaurants. His method allowed him to isolate the way sudden government-imposed price increases affected consumer behavior. And when he compared the results with obesity figures in the states, he reached a surprising conclusion. "Raising cigarette taxes causes smoking to fall, but it doesn't lead to obesity,"
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"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
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