A Weighty Issue Revisited: The Dynamic Effect of Body Weight on Earnings and Satisfaction in Germany

Frieder Kropfhäußer and Marco Sunder

No 635, SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research from DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP)

Abstract: We estimate the relationship between changes in the body mass index (bmi) and wages or satisfaction, respectively, in a panel of German employees. In contrast to previous literature, the dynamic models indicate that there is an inverse u-shaped association between bmi and wages among young workers. Among young male workers, work satisfaction is affected beyond the effect on earnings. Our finding of an implied optimum bmi in the overweight range could indicate that the recent rise in weight does not yet constitute a major limitation to productivity.

Keywords: Obesity; earnings; System-GMM estimator; dynamic panel model; SOEP (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 J28 J31 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 14 p.
Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.439709.de/diw_sp0635.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp635

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research from DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bibliothek ().