The Effect of Obesity on Wages and Employment: The Difference Between Having a High BMI and Being Fat

Edvard Johansson (), Petri Böckerman (), Urpo Kiiskinen () and Markku Heliövaara ()
Additional contact information
Urpo Kiiskinen: National Public Health Institute, Postal: Mannerheimintie 166, FIN-00300 Helsinki, Finland
Markku Heliövaara: National Public Health Institute, Postal: Mannerheimintie 166, FIN-00300 Helsinki, Finland

No 528, Working Papers from Hanken School of Economics

Abstract: In this paper, we re-examine the relationship between overweight and labour market success, using indicators of individual body composition along with BMI (Body Mass Index). We use the dataset from Finland in which weight, height, fat mass and waist circumference are not self-reported, but obtained as part of the overall health examination. We find that waist circumference, but not weight or fat mass, has a negative effect on wages for women, whereas all measures of obesity have negative effects on women’s employment probabilities. For men, the only obesity measure that is significant for men’s employment probabilities is fat mass. One interpretation of our findings is that the negative wage effects of overweight on wages run through the discrimination channel, but that the negative effects of overweight on employment have more to do with ill health. All in all, measures of body composition provide a more refined picture about the effects of obesity on wages and employment.

Keywords: wages; employment; bmi; overweight; obesity; fatness; adiposity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2007-06-13
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-lab and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://openax.shh.fi:8180/dspace/bitstream/10227/244/1/528-978-951-555-963-0.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to openax.shh.fi:8180 (A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond.)

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:hhb:hanken:0528

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Hanken School of Economics Hanken School of Economics, Arkadiankatu 22, P.O.B. 479; FIN 00101 Helsinki, Finland. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Staffan Dellringer ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).