 Obesity and labour market success in Finland: The difference between having a high BMI and being fatEdvard Johansson (), Petri Böckerman (), Urpo Kiiskinen and Markku Heliövaara Economics & Human Biology, 2009, vol. 7, issue 1, 36-45 Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between obesity and labour market success in Finland, using various indicators of individual body composition along with body mass index (BMI). Weight, height, fat mass and waist circumference are measured by health professionals. We find that only waist circumference has a negative association with wages for women, whereas no obesity measure is significant in the linear wage models for men. However, all measures of obesity are negatively associated with women's employment probability and fat mass is negatively associated with men's employment probability. We also find that the use of categories for waist circumference and fat mass has a substantial influence on the results. For example, the category for high fat mass is associated with roughly 5.5% lower wages for men. All in all, the results indicate that in the absence of measures of body composition, there is a risk that labour market penalties associated with obesity are measured with bias. Keywords: Obesity; Body; composition; Fatness; Wages; Employment (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ehbiol:v:7:y:2009:i:1:p:36-45 Access Statistics for this article Economics & Human Biology is currently edited by J. Komlos, Inas R Kelly and Joerg Baten More articles in Economics & Human Biology from Elsevier |
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