The Growth of Obesity and Technological Change: A Theoretical and Empirical Examination

Darius Lakdawalla and Tomas Philipson

No 203, Working Papers from Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago

Abstract: This paper provides a theoretical and empirical examination of the long-run growth in weight over time. We argue that technological change has induced weight growth by making home- and market-production more sedentary and by lowering food prices through agricultural innovation. We consider how such technological change creates unexpected relationships among income, food prices, and weight. Using individual-level data from 1976 to 1994, we find that technology-based reductions in food prices and job-related exercise have had significant impacts on weight across time and populations. We find that about forty percent of the recent growth in weight seems to be due to innovation in agricultural production passed through as reduced food prices, while sixty percent may be due to demand factors such as increased productivity in home- or market production being associated with declining physical activity.

Keywords: technology; weight; obesity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-04
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://harrisschool.uchicago.edu/about/publication ... ers/pdf/wp_02_03.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Growth of Obesity and Technological Change: A Theoretical and Empirical Examination (2002)
Working Paper: The Growth of Obesity and Technological Change: A Theoretical and Empirical Examination (2002)
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:har:wpaper:0203

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Eleanor Cartelli ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).