Recent studies conducted by the Ohio State Center for Human Resource Research and published in the February issue of “Tobacco Control” suggest that smoking not only depletes your health, is empties your wallet.

Researcher and author of the study Jay Zagorsky took surveys dating back to 1985 and studied the amount spent by smokers and non-smokers. Zagorsky said he found heavy smokers tend to have a much lower net worth when compared to those who are light smokers, while non-smokers have as much as twice the net worth of heavy smokers.

“Non-smokers obviously have a much higher net worth than heavy smokers because they are not spending money on cigarettes,” Zagorsky said. “Also, every year that they continue to smoke their net worth falls by about 4 percent.”

To calculate the net worth, Zagorsky added up all the assets, such as money and all belongings, and then subtracted their debts, loans, credit cards and the amount spent on cigarettes.

Non-smokers had an average net worth of $3,800 while heavy smokers had a net worth of $2,000.

“While there is no direct evidence because we can’t run a control group while experimenting but just by looking at the numbers, people who smoke do not have as much as those who do not,” Zagorsky said. “Smokers still had lower wealth when we held certain aspects constant.”

The statistics used in Zagorsky’s study were provided by the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, which is a national survey done by Ohio State researchers. The surveys were done in 1985, 1992, 1994, and the last in 1998.

About 9,000 people were polled for a general survey for the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, and they found that 3,800 were non-smokers and 1,700 were heavy smokers, defined as those who smoke a pack or more per day. About 3,300 made up the rest of the group who were classified as light smokers, defined as those who smoke less than a pack per day.

The conclusion of the study suggested smokers tend to pay for cigarettes out of the money that most people are saving.

One smoker, who recently quit, agrees with study.

Jake Warm, a senior in business, quit smoking about a month ago and already feels the effects of dropping his five-year-old habit.

“I feel like I have more money in my wallet now that I’m not running to the store for cigarettes,” Warm said. “I never felt like I was spending more when I did smoke; but now that I have quit I can tell a difference.”

“When we held certain factors constant such as education, race, marriage status and others we still came to the same conclusion,” Zagorsky said.

According to the survey and findings by Zagorsky, the average smoker spent $715 a year on smoking. He explained that by taking this number and multiplying it by seven and a half years, the number of years an average smoker has been buying cigarettes, the smoker has spent over $5,300 on their habit.