Unemployment and obesity during the great recession: evidence from US county panel data

Elwin Tobing

Applied Economics Letters, 2023, vol. 30, issue 4, 536-542

Abstract: This article investigates the effect of unemployment on obesity during the Great Recession. Previous studies using mainly individual data surveys find that the relationship is inconclusive. Motivated by the current economic crisis due to the coronavirus pandemic, we revisit the debate and exploit cross county US data, a relatively unexplored dataset in the study on obesity. We find a pro-cyclical relationship between unemployment and obesity. We further explore whether the positive relationship may relate to lack of recreation and physical exercises during the great economic downturn due to the scarcity of public recreational and fitness facility (RFF). Our findings show that the effect of unemployment on obesity is significant in both counties with scarce and abundant RFF. Hence, the limited access to public RFF during the COVID pandemic may, by itself, not contribute to weight gain among adult Americans.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13504851.2021.1998316 (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:taf:apeclt:v:30:y:2023:i:4:p:536-542

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEL20

DOI: 10.1080/13504851.2021.1998316

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics Letters is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics Letters from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().