 “Do I look fat?” Self-perceived body weight and labor market outcomesPatricia K. Smith and Jay Zagorsky Economics & Human Biology, 2018, vol. 30, issue C, 48-58 Abstract: Research reporting that greater body weight is associated with lower wages and employment, particularly among women, focuses on how employers perceive workers. In contrast, we examine whether workers’ own perceptions of body weight influence labor market outcomes. Numerous studies find that misperception of body weight influences health behaviors and health, both mental and physical. For example, anorexia nervosa involves the over-perception of weight and raises the risk of cardiovascular disease. Do the health consequences of inaccurate self-perceived weight carry through to the labor market? We use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) to investigate patterns in weight misperception and three labor market outcomes. We find little evidence that either over-perception or under-perception of weight is associated with wages, weeks worked, or the number of jobs held for women and men. Keywords: BMI; Weight misperception; Wages; Employment (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:30:y:2018:i:c:p:48-58 DOI: 10.1016/j.ehb.2018.05.002 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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