Obesity, disability, and the labor force

Kristin Butcher and Kyung-Hong Park

Economic Perspectives, 2008, vol. 32, issue Q I, 2-16

Abstract: Men of prime working age have increased their non-employment rates over the past 30 years, and disability rates have also increased. Many have noted that this increase has happened against a backdrop of generally improving health in the U.S. population. However, obesity has increased substantially over this period. The authors find that changes in the characteristics of male workers?including age, race, ethnicity, and obesity levels?can explain a large portion (around 40 percent) of the increase in non-employment.

Keywords: Obesity; Unemployment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.chicagofed.org/digital_assets/publicati ... rt1_butcher_park.pdf (application/pdf)

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:fip:fedhep:y:2008:i:qi:p:2-16:n:v.32no.1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic Perspectives from Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lauren Wiese ().