Fat, muscles, and wages

Christiane Bozoyan and Tobias Wolbring

Economics & Human Biology, 2011, vol. 9, issue 4, 356-363

Abstract: Recent studies in health economics have generated two important findings: that as a measure of fatness the body mass index (BMI) is biased; and that, when it comes to analyzing wage correlates, both fat-free mass (FFM) and body fat (BF) are better suited to the task. We validate these findings for Germany using the BIAdata Base Project and the German Socio-Economic Panel. While we find no significant correlation between BMI and wages in any of our models, simple linear regression models featuring both contemporary and time-lagged fatness measures indicate that FFM and, to a lesser extent, BF are associated with hourly wages: more specifically, the relationship between FFM/BF and hourly wages is about two to three times higher for females than for males. In contrast, fixed-effects models indicate that there is no correlation between hourly wages and both FFM and BF with one exception: a significant correlation (and one in line with expectations) is found to be the rule among job changers.

Keywords: BMI; Body composition; Body fat; Fat-free mass; Obesity; Wages; Earnings; Income (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ehbiol:v:9:y:2011:i:4:p:356-363

DOI: 10.1016/j.ehb.2011.07.001

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