 On the distributional and evolutionary nature of the obesity wage penaltyChristian Brown and P. Wesley Routon Economics & Human Biology, 2018, vol. 28, issue C, 160-172 Abstract: The economics literature supports a link between labor market measures, such as earnings, and health conditions, such as obesity. There is reason to believe the effects of obesity on wages may vary for high- and low-earning individuals and that obesity wage effects may evolve over a lifecycle or from generation to generation. Drawing on data from two longitudinal surveys, we estimate quantile and fixed effect quantile regressions, among others, to further examine the obesity wage effect. Results suggest an increasingly severe penalty across the wage distribution for females. Specifically, the highest-earning women may be penalized as much as five times that of the lowest earners. Results for males suggest that penalties may be present at select wage levels, while prior research has generally found no male obesity penalty. We also provide evidence that the obesity penalty has increased across generations and limited evidence that it may slow earnings growth over one’s lifetime. Keywords: Obesity; Earnings; Wage penalty; Longitudinal quantile regression; NLSY79; NLSY97 (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ehbiol:v:28:y:2018:i:c:p:160-172 DOI: 10.1016/j.ehb.2017.10.001 Access Statistics for this article Economics & Human Biology is currently edited by J. Komlos, Inas R Kelly and Joerg Baten More articles in Economics & Human Biology from Elsevier |
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