The impact of body weight on occupational mobility and career development

Matthew Harris

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between individuals' weight and their employment decisions over the life cycle. I estimate a dynamic stochastic model of individuals' annual joint decisions of occupation, hours worked, and schooling. The model allows body weight to affect non-monetary costs, switching costs, and distribution of wages for each occupation; and also allows individuals' employment decisions to affect body weight. I use conditional density estimation to formulate the distributions of wages and body weight evolution. I find that heavier individuals face higher switching costs when transitioning into white collar occupations, earn lower returns to experience in white-collar occupations, and earn lower wages in socially intensive jobs. Simulating the model with estimated parameters, decreased occupational mobility accounts for 10 percent of the obesity wage gap. While contemporaneous wage penalties for body weight are small, the cost over the life cycle is substantial. An exogenous increase in initial body mass by 20 percent leads to a 10 percent decrease in wages over the life course.

Keywords: Labor; occupational choice; obesity; dynamic discrete choice; productivity; switching costs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D91 I14 J24 J3 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-01-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm, nep-hea and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Journal Article: THE IMPACT OF BODY WEIGHT ON OCCUPATIONAL MOBILITY AND CAREER DEVELOPMENT (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:61924

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