Consequences of Obesity

Julian Alston and Abigail M. Okrent
Additional contact information
Abigail M. Okrent: United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service

Chapter 3 in The Effects of Farm and Food Policy on Obesity in the United States, 2017, pp 55-73 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Obesity has serious consequences both for individuals and for society as a whole. At the individual level, obesity is associated with a host of diseases resulting in reduced life expectancy, lower productivity and wages, and increased health-care expenditure. Obesity also entails significant private expenditures on preventative measures such as gymnasium memberships and weight-loss programs. At the level of the broader society, the individual consequences are reflected in social costs through lost productivity, reduced income tax receipts for the government, greater public health-care expenditure, and expenditure on public policies for reducing obesity. In this chapter, we describe and document the individual consequences and present and interpret measures of the social costs.

Keywords: Chronic diseases (diabetes); Productivity losses; Health-care costs; Social costs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:pal:psachp:978-1-137-47831-3_3

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9781137478313

DOI: 10.1057/978-1-137-47831-3_3

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Studies in Agricultural Economics and Food Policy from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().