The researchers’ primary interest was tracking wages after
respondents started their first jobs, and they found a clear
correlation between wage growth and smoking. Munasinghe and
Sicherman found a 4.7 percent gap (after controlling for a range
of family and individual characteristics) between smokers’ and
nonsmokers’ first wages (what people were paid at their first
full-time job). Though this result was consistent with many
previous findings that smokers earn less than nonsmokers,
earlier studies didn’t take wage dynamics into account. Because
Munasinghe and Sicherman did consider wage dynamics, their
results were more definitive: over the first decade of
employment, the difference in wages increased dramatically —
nonsmokers’ wages grew to be anywhere from 15 to 40 percent
higher than those of smokers. The far-reaching NLSY data allowed
the researchers to eliminate variables other than smoking —
including sex, age, race, health, schooling, cognitive ability,
religion and neighborhood income — that might co