Why the Poor Get Fat: Weight Gain and Economic Insecurity
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Trenton G. Smith
Something about being poor makes people fat. Though there are many possible explanations for the income-body weight gradient, we investigate a promising but little-studied hypothesis: that changes in body weight can—at least in part—be explained as an optimal response to economic insecurity. We use data on working-age men from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) to identify the effects of various measures of economic insecurity on weight gain. We find in particular that over the 12-year period between 1988 and 2000, the average man gained about 21 pounds. A one percentage point (0.01) increase in the probability of becoming unemployed causes weight gain over this period to increase by about 0.6 pounds, and each realized 50% drop in annual income results in an increase of about 5 pounds. The mechanism also appears to work in reverse, with health insurance and intrafamily transfers protecting against weight gain.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
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- On Inferring Demand for Health Care in the Presence of Anchoring and Selection Biases
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Article
- Changes in Spousal Health Insurance Coverage and Female Labor Supply Decisions
- Longer Hours and Larger Waistlines? The Relationship between Work Hours and Obesity
- Health Insurance Demand and the Generosity of Benefits: Fixed Effects Estimates of the Price Elasticity
- The Effect of Smoking in Young Adulthood on Smoking Later in Life: Evidence based on the Vietnam Era Draft Lottery
- Why the Poor Get Fat: Weight Gain and Economic Insecurity
- On Inferring Demand for Health Care in the Presence of Anchoring and Selection Biases
- Comparing Health of People with Heart Disease in the United States and Canada
- The Effects of Adolescent Health on Educational Outcomes: Causal Evidence Using Genetic Lotteries between Siblings
