Forecasting United States mortality using cohort smoking histories

In this paper, we introduce a recently established relationship between cohort smoking patterns and adult mortality into mortality projections for the United States. In particular, we incorporate a variable representing the intensity of smoking within a cohort into the original Lee-Carter projection model. The introduction of this variable accounts for important anomalies in the recent age/sex pattern of mortality change and enables the use of a common temporal trend of mortality change for the 2 sexes. We project age-specific mortality rates for men and women at ages 50-84 between 2004 and 2034 in the United States. Because of reductions in smoking that have already occurred or can be reliably projected, mortality is projected to decline much faster when smoking is introduced into the model.