Why the Poor Get Fat: Weight Gain and Economic Insecurity

Trenton Smith (), Christiana Stoddard and Michael Barnes ()
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Michael Barnes: School of Economic Sciences, Washington State University

No 2007-16, Working Papers from School of Economic Sciences, Washington State University

Abstract: Something about being poor makes people fat. Though there are many possible explanations for the income-body weight gradient, we investigate a promising butlittle-studied hypothesis: that economic insecurity acts as an independent cause of weight gain. We use data on working age men from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) to identify the effect of various measures of economic insecurity on weight gain. We find in particular that over the 12-year period between 1988 and 2000, a one point (0.01) increase in the probability of becoming unemployed causes weight gain over this period to increase by about one pound, and each realized drop in annual income results in an increase of about 5.5 pounds. The mechanism also appears to work in reverse, with health insurance and government "social safety net" payments leading to smaller weight gains.

Keywords: obesity; unemployment; moral hazard; NLSY79 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 I12 I18 I38 J22 J65 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2007-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

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Journal Article: Why the Poor Get Fat: Weight Gain and Economic Insecurity (2009)
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