Impatient People Are Smokers

As Ikeda, Shinsuke, professor of Osaka University, tells(sorry the link is all Japanese), more impatient people smoke more.

The reason is as follows:

When smokers decide if they smoke or not, they usually compare the present value of the utility from smoking today to the present value of the disutility(damage to their tomorrow's health) from enjoying smoking today. When they decide to smoke, their marginal utility of smoking today is higher than their (present value) marginal disutility of not smoking today. (This is a kind of the dynamic optimization problem, though.)

In other words, smokers put more importance on today's enjoyment than on tomorrow's risk to their health(smokers are impatient), and they are less likely to avoid the risk of their health.(smokers are less risk-averse).

Moreover, the people who have much income and feel happy with it are less likely to be impatient, while the people who feel unhappy in their life are more likely to seek for peace of mind today. Thus, smokers are not happy. The amount of the unhappiness that smokers have are well worth $18,000, according to some research.

Smokers are impatient and unhappy. That's an interesting insight.