An Economic Analysis of Adult Obesity: Results from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System

Shin-Yi Chou, Michael Grossman and Henry Saffer ()

No 9247, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Since the late 1970s, the number of obese adults in the United States has grown by over 50 percent. This paper examines the factors that may be responsible for this rapidly increasing prevalence rate. To study the determinants of adult obesity and related outcomes, we employ micro-level data from the 1984-1999 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. These repeated cross sections are augmented with state level measures pertaining to the per capita number of fast- food restaurants, the per capita number of full-service restaurants, the price of a meal in each type of restaurant, the price of food consumed at home, the price of cigarettes, clean indoor air laws, and hours of work per week and hourly wage rates by age, gender, race, years of formal schooling completed, and marital status. Our main results are that these variables have the expected effects on obesity and explain a substantial amount of its trend. These findings control for individual-level measures of household income, years of formal schooling completed, and marital status.

JEL-codes: I12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-mic
Note: EH
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (62)

Published as Chou, Shin-Yi & Grossman, Michael & Saffer, Henry, 2004. "An economic analysis of adult obesity: results from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 565-587, May.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w9247.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: An economic analysis of adult obesity: results from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (2004)
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:nbr:nberwo:9247

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w9247

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().