The Greek smoking epidemic from a life-course perspective.

Background: Smoking rates in Greece are the highest recorded among OECD countries, but the historical and life-course evolution of smoking patterns is largely unknown. The present paper addresses this gap.

Methods: We produce nationally representative life-course trajectories of smoking and related mortality of eight generations of Greek men and women.

A Novel Indicator of Life-Course Smoking Prevalence in the United States Combining Popularity, Duration, Quantity, and Quality of Smoking.

Objectives: To develop a smoking indicator that combines the popularity and duration of smoking and the quantity and quality of consumed cigarettes, factors that vary dramatically over time and across generations.

Methods: We used retrospective reports on smoking behavior and a time series of cigarette tar yields to standardize nationally representative life-course smoking prevalence rates of 11 generations of US men and women, spanning 120 years. For each generation and gender, we related the standardized data with the corresponding rates of smoking-attributable mortality.

Is Smoking Behavior Culturally Determined? Evidence from British Immigrants.

We exploit migration patterns from the UK to Australia and the US to investigate whether a person's decision to smoke is determined by culture. For each country, we use retrospective data to describe individual smoking trajectories over the life-course. For the UK, we use these trajectories to measure culture by cohort and cohort-age, and more accurately relative to the extant literature.

Smoking behavior of Mexicans: patterns by birth-cohort, gender, and education.

Objectives: Little is known about historical smoking patterns in Mexico. Policy makers must rely on imprecise predictions of human or fiscal burdens from smoking-related diseases. In this paper we document intergenerational patterns of smoking, project them for future cohorts, and discuss those patterns in the context of Mexico's impressive economic growth.

Dying for a smoke: how much does differential mortality of smokers affect estimated life-course smoking prevalence?

Objective: An extensive literature uses reconstructed historical smoking rates by birth-cohort to inform anti-smoking policies. This paper examines whether and how these rates change when one adjusts for differential mortality of smokers and non-smokers.

Methods: Using retrospectively reported data from the US (Panel Study of Income Dynamics, 1986, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2005), the UK (British Household Panel Survey, 1999, 2002), and Russia (Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Study, 2000), we generate life-course smoking prevalence rates by age-cohort.