The Impact of Cigarette Smoking on Life Expectancy between 1980 and 2010: A Global Perspective

Elisenda Renteria, International Agency for Research on Cancer
David Forman, International Agency for Research on Cancer
Isabelle Soerjomataram, International Agency for Research on Cancer

Almost 6 million people died from smoking in 2010, and 8.3 million are expected to die from smoking in 2030, 80% of them in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). Among the methods proposed to estimate smoking-related mortality, none seems adequate to analyze data from developing countries. This paper aims to estimate the time trends of the impact of smoking on life expectancy from 1980 to 2010 in 63 countries. We propose a revision of Peto’s method taking into account national accumulated exposure to tobacco smoke and smoking-related risk of death, anchored to the country’s level and position within the smoking epidemic spectrum. The impact of tobacco-smoking on life expectancy has decreased for men in high-income countries and some Latin American countries, but is still increasing in East Asia and southern-eastern Europe. Women from high-income countries observe the larger increases in the impact of tobacco on life expectancy.