The economic costs of obesity: evidence from China

Lei Cheng and Senyang Wang

Applied Economics Letters, 2025, vol. 32, issue 14, 2050-2054

Abstract: The world is getting fat. This paper studies the economic costs of employee obesity to firms in China. Using the Work Environment Survey of Chinese Employees (WESCE), we find that the economic cost of a one-standard-deviation-increase in the employee obesity rate is about $110,000. The channel analysis suggests that obesity-induced poor health and sickness absenteeism result in productivity loss. We further find that the obesity rate among employees can be reduced if the labour union pays attention to the diet, exercise, and health of employees. One of the policy implications is that firms should set up a union-like body and require it to pay attention to employees’ health.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13504851.2024.2332530 (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:32:y:2025:i:14:p:2050-2054

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

DOI: 10.1080/13504851.2024.2332530

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 ().