BMI Changes in Russian Adults: The Role of Health Related Behaviors and Spousal Relationships

Sonya Huffman ()

Staff General Research Papers Archive from Iowa State University, Department of Economics

Abstract: The paper investigates the effects of changes in marital status and health related behaviors (smoking and drinking) on the body mass index (BMI) in Russian adults over a ten-year period. Smoking and drinking behavior changes have played an important part in health status changes over 1994 to 2004. The results indicate that the individual weight/BMI changes asymmetrically in health determinants; the sign and the magnitude of the response are different depending on the starting point and whether there is an increase or a decrease in the explanatory variable. Males' BMI decreases with smoking and increases with quitting smoking, but females' BMI increases with drinking alcohol and decreases with stopping drinking. Losing a partner decreases only the females' BMI, but gaining a spouse/partner is associated with increases in BMI for both genders. For married females and males, the change in spousal BMI is significantly positively related. Understanding interactions between individual health-related behaviors and the set of determinants that contribute to such behaviors is a fundamental step in the design of effective interventions.

Keywords: BMI; Russia; health related behaviors; asymmetric response (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 I12 O52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-03-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cis, nep-hea and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/papers/p15987-2013-03-06.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: BMI Changes in Russian Adults: The Role of Health Related Behaviors and Spousal Relationships (2014)
Working Paper: BMI changes in Russian adults: The role of health related behaviors and spousal relationships (2014)
Working Paper: BMI changes in Russian adults: The role of health related behaviors and spousal relationships (2014)
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:isu:genres:35987

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Staff General Research Papers Archive from Iowa State University, Department of Economics Iowa State University, Dept. of Economics, 260 Heady Hall, Ames, IA 50011-1070. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Curtis Balmer ().