Race, Social Class, and Bulimia Nervosa

Michelle Goeree (), John Ham and Daniela Iorio
Additional contact information
Michelle Goeree: University of Zurich
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Michelle Sovinsky

No 2011-034, Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group

Abstract: In this paper we explore a serious eating disorder, bulimia nervosa (BN), which afflicts a surprising number of girls in the US. We challenge the long-held belief that BN primarily affects high income White teenagers, using a unique data set on adolescent females evaluated regarding their tendencies towards bulimic behaviors independent of any diagnoses or treatment they have received. Our results reveal that African Americans are more likely to exhibit bulimic behavior than Whites; as are girls from low income families compared to middle and high income families. We use another data set to show that who is diagnosed with an eating disorder is in accord with popular beliefs, suggesting that African American and low-income girls are being under-diagnosed for BN. Our findings have important implications for public policy since they provide direction to policy makers regarding which adolescent females are most at risk for BN. Our results are robust to different model specifications and identifying assumptions.

Keywords: Bulimia Nervosa; Race; Income; Education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-soc
Note: FI
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Goeree ... ace-social-class.pdf First version, February 21, 2011 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Race, Social Class, and Bulimia Nervosa (2012)
Working Paper: Race, social class, and bulimia nervosa (2012)
Working Paper: Race, Social Class, and Bulimia Nervosa (2011)
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:hka:wpaper:2011-034

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jennifer Pachon ().