Smoking Hurts Wealth as Well as Health, Study Suggests.(costs of smoking )

Byline: Ohio State University

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Feb. 2 (AScribe Newswire) -- Maybe packs of cigarettes should come with a new warning: smoking is hazardous to your wealth.

A new study suggests that typical non-smokers' net worth is roughly 50 percent higher than that of light smokers and about twice the level of that of heavy smokers.

And that wealth gap grows by about $410, or 4 percent, each year that a person continues to smoke, said Jay Zagorsky, author of the study and a research scientist at Ohio State University's Center for Human Resource Research.

Federal statistics on cigarette spending suggest that the wealth reductions are …