Do political factors matter in explaining under- and overweight outcomes in developing countries?

Elena Fumagalli, Emmanouil Mentzakis and Marc Suhrcke

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2013, vol. 46, issue C, 48-56

Abstract: We construct a rich dataset covering 47 developing countries over the years 1990–2007, combining several micro and macro level data sources to explore the link between political factors and body mass index (BMI). We implement a heteroskedastic generalized ordered logit model allowing for different covariate effects across the BMI distribution and accounting for the unequal BMI dispersion by geographical area. We find that systems with democratic qualities are more likely to reduce under-weight, but increase overweight/obesity, whereas effective political competition does entail double-benefits in the form of reducing both under-weight and obesity. Our results are robust to the introduction of country fixed effects.

Keywords: BMI; Obesity; Developing countries; Generalized ordered response models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C25 D72 I12 I15 I18 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053535713000966
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:soceco:v:46:y:2013:i:c:p:48-56

DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2013.06.002

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) is currently edited by Pablo Brañas Garza

More articles in Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().