Pay hike cuts smoking
Scientists have found a unique way to help employers reduce smoking rates: raising wages! A new US study has found that a 10% increase in wages leads to about a 5% drop in smoking rates among workers who are male or who have high school educations or less and improves their overall chances of quitting smoking from 17 to 20%. “Our findings are especially important as inflationadjusted wages for low-income jobs have been dropping for decades and the percentage of workers in low-paying jobs has been growing nationwide,“ said study senior author Paul Leigh, professor of public health sciences and researcher with the Centre for Healthcare Policy and Research at University of California–Davis Health System.
“Increasing the minimum wage could have a big impact on a significant health threat,“ said Leigh.
Leigh and lead author Juan Du, who received her doctoral degree at UC Davis, evaluated data on wages, smoking status and state of residence for fulltime employees aged between 21 and 65 years from the 1999 to 2009 Panel Study of Income Dynamics.
