Lifetime Productivity Losses Associated with Obesity Status in Early Adulthood

Kristian Neovius (), Clas Rehnberg, Finn Rasmussen and Martin Neovius

Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, 2012, vol. 10, issue 5, 309-317

Abstract: Background: Obesity is a well-known risk factor for sick leave, disability pension and premature death. Obesity is therefore presumably related to in-creased productivity losses. Objective: The aim of this study was to estimate the lifetime productivity losses to society associated with obesity status. Methods: This study was based on a 38-year follow-up of a nationwide cohort of 45 920 Swedish men performing mandatory military conscription tests at age 18.7±0.5 years. Body mass index (BMI) based on measured height and weight at the time of military conscription tests was used to define underweight (>18.5kg/m 2 ), normal weight (18.5–24.9 kg/m 2 ), overweight (25.0–29.9 kg/m 2 ) and obesity (≥30.0kg/m 2 ). Data on sick leave, disability pension and premature death were retrieved from national registers. The calculations were adjusted for socioeconomic index, smoking and muscular strength. Results: Using the human capital approach, the lifetime productivity losses were calculated as 55.6 (95% CI 50.7, 62.0) × €1000 and 55.6 (95% CI 50.9, 61.4)× €1000 for underweight and normal weight, respectively, and 72.6 (95% CI 66.3, 80.7)× € 1000 and 95.4 (95% CI 89.0, 102.9) × € 1000 for overweight and obesity, respectively. If using the friction cost method instead, the estimated productivity losses were reduced by about 80%. Conclusion: Obesity is associated with almost twice as high productivity losses to society as for normal weight over a lifetime. These costs are important to include in health economic analyses of obesity intervention programmes in order to ensure an effective allocation of resources from a societal perspective. Copyright Springer International Publishing AG 2012

Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/BF03261865 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:spr:aphecp:v:10:y:2012:i:5:p:309-317

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/40258

DOI: 10.1007/BF03261865

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Health Economics and Health Policy is currently edited by Timothy Wrightson

More articles in Applied Health Economics and Health Policy from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().