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Title: Why the Poor Get Fat: Weight Gain and Economic Insecurity
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Smith, Trenton G. Stoddard, Christiana Barnes, Michael G. |
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Why the Poor Get Fat: Weight Gain and Economic Insecurity Forum for Health Economics and Policy 12,2 (December 2009): 1-29. Advance on-line publication by Berkeley Electronic Press. Also: http://www.bepress.com/fhep/12/2/5/ Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: Berkeley Electronic Press (bpress) Keyword(s): Income; Income Level; Income Risk; Insurance, Health; Obesity; Poverty; Weight Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. Something about being poor makes people fat. Though there are many possible explanations for the income-body weight gradient, we investigate a promising but little-studied hypothesis: that changes in body weight can-at least in part-be explained as an optimal response to economic insecurity. We use data on working-age men from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) to identify the effects of various measures of economic insecurity on weight gain. We find in particular that over the 12-year period between 1988 and 2000, the average man gained about 21 pounds. A one percentage point (0.01) increase in the probability of becoming unemployed causes weight gain over this period to increase by about 0.6 pounds, and each realized 50% drop in annual income results in an increase of about 5 pounds. The mechanism also appears to work in reverse, with health insurance and intrafamily transfers protecting against weight gain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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Bibliography Citation
Smith, Trenton G., Christiana Stoddard and Michael G. Barnes. "Why the Poor Get Fat: Weight Gain and Economic Insecurity." Forum for Health Economics and Policy 12,2 (December 2009): 1-29. Advance on-line publication by Berkeley Electronic Press.
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