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Why the Poor Get Fat: Weight Gain and Economic Insecurity

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Author Info
Trenton Smith
Christiana Stoddard
Michael G. Barnes () (School of Economic Sciences, Washington State University)

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Abstract

Something about being poor makes people fat. Though there are many possible explanations for the income-body weight gradient, we investigate a promising butlittle-studied hypothesis: that economic insecurity acts as an independent cause of weight gain. We use data on working age men from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) to identify the effect of various measures of economic insecurity on weight gain. We find in particular that over the 12-year period between 1988 and 2000, a one point (0.01) increase in the probability of becoming unemployed causes weight gain over this period to increase by about one pound, and each realized drop in annual income results in an increase of about 5.5 pounds. The mechanism also appears to work in reverse, with health insurance and government "social safety net" payments leading to smaller weight gains.

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File URL: http://www.ses.wsu.edu/PDFFiles/WorkingPapers/TSmith/Insecurity033007.pdf
File Format: application/pdf
File Function: First version, 2007
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Publisher Info
Paper provided by School of Economic Sciences, Washington State University in its series Working Papers with number 2007-16.

Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML (with abstract), plain text (with abstract), BibTeX, RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite), ReDIF
Length: 31 pages
Date of creation: Mar 2007
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:wsu:wpaper:tgsmith-2

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Related research
Keywords: obesity; unemployment; moral hazard; NLSY79;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Production
I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
J65 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies - - - Unemployment Insurance; Severance Pay; Plant Closings

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References listed on IDEAS
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  17. 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. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Trenton Smith & Hayley Chouinard & Philip Wandschneider, 2009. "Waiting for the Invisible Hand: Market Power and Endogenous Information in the Modern Market for Food," Working Papers 2009-07, School of Economic Sciences, Washington State University. [Downloadable!]
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