Cigarette smoking and self-reported health in China

The effect of cigarette smoking on self-reported or assessed health (SAH) has been considered in several studies, with some surprising results, but smoking behavior has received less attention in studies in countries like China, than in the United States and various European countries. In this manuscript the variation in an ordinal endogenous SAH variable is modeled with an ordinal endogenous cigarette smoking variable, using the copula approach to accommodate skewness in the error distribution. The treatment approach avoids several selection issues that could bias empirical estimates. The empirical model is estimated for a random sample of adult males from nine Chinese provinces in the 2006 China Health and Nutrition Survey. The results for our sample suggest that heavy smokers are more likely to report excellent health. Government and those in health policy might target heavy smokers with the message that quitting does result in benefits, keeping in mind that their own reported assessment of their health is itself a function of several factors.