 Happy House: Spousal Weight and Individual Well-BeingAndrew Clark and Fabrice Etilé PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) from HAL Abstract: We use life satisfaction and Body Mass Index (BMI) information from three waves of the GSOEP to test for social interactions in BMI between spouses. Social interactions require that the cross-partial effect of partner's weight and own weight in the utility function be positive. Using life satisfaction as a utility proxy, semi-parametric regressions show that the correlation between satisfaction and own BMI is initially positive, but turns negative after some threshold. Critically, this latter threshold increases with partner's BMI when the individual is overweight. The negative well-being impact of own BMI is thus lower when the individual's partner is heavier, which is consistent with social contagion effects in weight. However, this relationship may also reflect selection on the marriage market or omitted variables, and it is difficult to think of convincing instruments that would allow causality to be clearly established. Keywords: Obesity; Subjective well-being; BMI; Social interactions (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published in Journal of Health Economics, 2011, 30 (5), pp.1124-1136. ⟨10.1016/j.jhealeco.2011.07.010⟩ There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:pseptp:halshs-00654627 DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2011.07.010 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) from HAL |
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