Body mass index and employment status: a new look

Jonas Minet Kinge ()
Additional contact information
Jonas Minet Kinge: Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Norway, Postal: Department of Health Statistics, , Norwegian Institute of Public Health, PO Box 4404 Nydalen, N-0403 Oslo

No 2015:3, HERO Online Working Paper Series from University of Oslo, Health Economics Research Programme

Abstract: Earlier literature has usually modelled the impact of obesity on employment status as a binary choice (employed, yes/no). I provide new evidence on the impact of obesity on employment status by treating the dependent variable as a as a multinomial choice variable. Using data from a representative English survey, with measured height and weight on parents and children, I define employment status as one of four: working; looking for paid work; permanently not working due to disability; and, looking after home or family. I use a multinomial logit model controlling for a set of covariates and I instrument for BMI based on genetic variation in weight. I find that BMI and obesity has a statistically significant impact on the probability of “not working due to disability”. The results for the other employment outcomes are less clear. My findings also suggest that the reason for the impact of obesity on employment is due to obesity being a deliberating health condition. Factors other than health may be less important in explaining the impact of BMI/obesity on employment.

Keywords: Adolescents; Obesity; Body Mass Index (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H51 I10 I11 I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 12 pages
Date: 2015-08-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.med.uio.no/helsam/forskning/nettverk/he ... erie/2015/2015-3.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:hhs:oslohe:2015_003

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in HERO Online Working Paper Series from University of Oslo, Health Economics Research Programme HERO / Department of Health Management and Health Economics P.O. Box 1089 Blindern, N-0317 Oslo, Norway. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kristi Brinkmann Lenander ().