Smokers earn less than non-smokers, but much is still unknown about the source(s) of the smoker's wage gap. We build on the work of Bhattacharya and Bundorf (2009), who provide evidence that obese workers receive lower wages on account of their higher expected healthcare costs. Similarly, we find that smokers who hold employer-sponsored health insurance (ESI) receive significantly lower wages than their non-smoking peers, while smokers who are not insured through their employer endure no such wage penalty. Our results have two implications: first, the incidence of smokers' elevated medical costs appears to be borne by smokers themselves in the form of lower wages. Second, differences in healthcare costs between smokers and non-smokers are a significant source of the smoker's wage gap.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 11. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 17 May 2026.
All research outputs
#4,293,078
of 34,612,600 outputs
Outputs from Journal of Health Economics
#1,046
of 2,349 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#20,643
of 167,803 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Journal of Health Economics
#16
of 33 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,612,600 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 87th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,349 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 28.3. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 54% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 167,803 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 87% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 33 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 51% of its contemporaries.
