Nicotine Nation: The dynamics of cigarette consumption in Russia

Presenter: Diana Quirmbach, University College London

Author: Christopher Gerry

Co-author(s): Diana Quirmbach

Cigarette consumption is responsible for the premature deaths of more than 300000 Russians annually and represents the single most preventable cause of both disease and death in Russia. Around 60% of Russian men smoke (the highest in Europe), and 20% of women. Reducing the consumption of cigarettes thus offers significant potential for improving health outcomes in one of Europe’s least healthy countries. Recently, efforts to reduce smoking have become the focus of government policy in Russia, with the introduction of a restrictive anti-smoking law in 2013, which amongst other things introduces bans on smoking in public places and on advertising as well as substantial tax increases. To inform these policies, we focus on the source of persistence in cigarette consumption based on ten years of individual-level, longitudinal data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey. The persistence in cigarette consumption over time can be due to (true) state dependence or unobserved individual heterogeneity. We specify a dynamic hurdle model allowing for different processes governing the decision to smoke and how much to consume and use non-linear panel data methods to disentangle these sources of persistence. We find that state dependence is stronger for men and the less educated. In all cases, accounting for unobservable heterogeneity reduces the estimated size of state dependence, indicating that part of the observed persistence in smoking is due to individual factors rather than to the addictiveness of nicotine. We draw out the implications of these findings in the context of the current policy experiment.