Direct and indirect effects of body weight on adult wages

Euna Han, Edward Norton and Lisa M. Powell

Economics & Human Biology, 2011, vol. 9, issue 4, 381-392

Abstract: Previous estimates of the association between body weight and wages in the literature have been conditional on education and occupation. In addition to the effect of current body weight status (body mass index (BMI) or obesity) on wages, this paper examines the indirect effect of body weight status in the late-teenage years on wages operating through education and occupation choice. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 data, for women, we find that a one-unit increase in BMI is directly associated with 1.83% lower hourly wages whereas the indirect BMI wage penalty is not statistically significant. Neither a direct nor an indirect BMI wage penalty is found for men. However, results based on clinical weight classification reveal that the indirect wage penalty occurs to a larger extent at the upper tail of the BMI distribution for both men and women via the pathways of education and occupation outcomes. Late-teen obesity is indirectly associated with 3.5% lower hourly wages for both women and men. These results are important because they imply that the total effect of obesity on wages is significantly larger than has been estimated in previous cross-sectional studies.

Keywords: BMI; Obesity; Wages; Indirect effect; Education; Occupation choice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I19 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (36)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1570677X11000803
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ehbiol:v:9:y:2011:i:4:p:381-392

DOI: 10.1016/j.ehb.2011.07.002

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
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().