Obesity and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from the British NCDS

Maarten Lindeboom (m.lindeboom@vu.nl), Petter Lundborg and Bas van der Klaauw

No 4099, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We study the effect of obesity on wages and employment, using data from the British NCDS. The results show a significant negative association between obesity and labor market outcomes even after controlling for a rich set of demographic, socioeconomic, environmental and behavioral variables. After instrumenting with parental obesity the associations are no longer significant. We show that the intergenerational correlation in obesity is mainly due to genetic variation. However, the instruments do not always pass the overidentification tests and are sometimes weak. We are therefore somewhat sceptical about using parental obesity as an instrument.

Keywords: endogeneity; employment; wages; labor; obesity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 J10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2009-03
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 (5)

Published - published as 'Assessing the Impact of Obesity on Labor Market Outcome' in: Economics and Human Biology, 2010, 8 (3), 309-319

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