Changes in Patterns of Smoking Related Cause of Death and the Impact on the “Golden Generations” in UK

Michael Murphy, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
Mariachiara Di Cesare, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

It is widely recognized that tobacco use is a risk factor for many diseases such as lung cancer, oral cancer, and emphysema among others. The analysis of mortality trends for these causes of deaths suggests a strong cohort effect which differs between men and women indicating differences in gender smoking patterns as well. The cohort approach is particularly important in the UK since changes in smoking patterns are often considered to be the main driver of 1925-1945 UK “golden” generations’ higher-than-average rates of mortality improvement. This paper presents cohort estimates of selected smoking related causes of death in England and Wales, and analyzes the relationship between annual changes in the cohort effect for lung cancer (based on fitting an Age-Period-Cohort model) and in the cohort function for overall mortality in order to attribute the proportion of overall mortality change due to changes in smoking patterns.