Uncovering the Roots of Obesity-based Wage Discrimination: The Role of Job Characteristics

Juan Dolado and Airam Guerra

No 16785, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: This paper investigates the roots of labour market discrimination underlying the negative correlation between body fat percentage and wages. Using a large panel dataset of individuals drawn from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97) for the US, we test whether residual wage gaps (once observed differences in productivity related to obesity are controlled for) are due to prejudice (taste-based discrimination) or statistical discrimination. Our main contribution is to examine how these two types of discrimination hinge on a wide range of obese individuals´ specific job and occupational characteristics (drawn from the O * Net Online database). Our analysis sheds light on whether discrimination originates from the attitudes of clients, fellow-workers or employers. We find strong empirical evidence supporting taste-based discrimination against obese females, especially as they become older, in jobs requiring frequent communication with either clients or employers. The evidence on this issue for males is weaker. These differences may be explained both by an over-representation of males among employers and different image concerns against people of the same gender

Keywords: Obesity; Wages; Job characteristics; Nlsy97; O*net online (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J31 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-12
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP16785 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: Uncovering the roots of obesity-based wage discrimination: The role of job characteristics (2023)
Working Paper: Uncovering the Roots of Obesity- Based Wage Discrimination: The Role of Job Characteristics (2023)
Working Paper: Uncovering the Roots of Obesity-Based Wage Discrimination: The Role of Job Characteristics (2021)
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:cpr:ceprdp:16785

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP16785

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().