Early life exposure to cigarette smoking and adult and old-age male mortality: Evidence from linked US full-count census and mortality data

Abstract

BACKGROUND Smoking is a leading cause of premature death across contemporary developed nations, but few longitudinal individual-level studies have examined the long-term health consequences of exposure to smoking. OBJECTIVE We examine the effect of fetal and infant exposure to exogenous variation in smoking, brought about by state-level cigarette taxation, on adulthood and old-age mortality (ages 55 ‒ 73) among cohorts of boys born in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s.