Smoking and the length of working life: An examination using the U.S. Health and Retirement Study

Inequalities in the length of working life are a major concern in aging societies.
However, what is driving these inequalities is poorly understood. In this paper, we use data from
the U.S. Health and Retirement Study and analyze the impact of smoking on healthy working life
expectancy at age 50 and related measures. We stratify our analysis by gender, race/ethnicity, and
educational attainment. We find that smoking consistently reduces heathy working life
expectancy: never smokers have the longest healthy working lives (10 years for men and eight
years for women), while ex-smokers and smokers experience reductions of approximately two and
four years, respectively. Lower educated and racial/ethnic minorities report shorter healthy
working lives, and smoking explains up to one-third of these inequalities. Using placebo tests, we
provide evidence supporting the causal relationship between smoking and reduced healthy
working life expectancy.