IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/reveho/v21y2023i4d10.1007_s11150-022-09644-4.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Life satisfaction and body mass index: estimating the monetary value of achieving optimal body weight

Author

Listed:
  • Kristjana Baldursdottir

    (University of Iceland)

  • Paul McNamee

    (University of Aberdeen)

  • Edward C. Norton

    (University of Michigan & NBER)

  • Tinna Laufey Asgeirsdottir

    (University of Iceland)

Abstract

According to the World Health Organization, obesity is one of the greatest public-health challenges of the 21st century. Body weight is also known to affect individuals’ self-esteem and interpersonal relationships, including romantic ones. We estimate the “utility-maximizing” Body Mass Index (BMI) and calculate the implied monetary value of changes in both individual and spousal BMI, using the compensating income variation method and data from the Swiss Household Panel. We employ the Oster’s method (Oster, 2019) to estimate the degree of omitted variable bias in the effect of BMI on life satisfaction. Results suggest that the optimal own BMI is 27.1 and 20.1 for men and women, respectively. The annual value of reaching optimal weight ranges from $7069 for women with underweight to $88,709 for women with obesity and between $95,165 for men with underweight to $32,644 for men with obesity. On average, women value reduction in their own BMI about four times higher than reduction in their spouse’s BMI. Men, on the other hand, value a reduction in their spouse’s BMI almost twice as much compared to a reduction in their own BMI. This highlights important gender differences and relative effects based on spousal BMI.

Suggested Citation

  • Kristjana Baldursdottir & Paul McNamee & Edward C. Norton & Tinna Laufey Asgeirsdottir, 2023. "Life satisfaction and body mass index: estimating the monetary value of achieving optimal body weight," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 21(4), pages 1215-1246, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:reveho:v:21:y:2023:i:4:d:10.1007_s11150-022-09644-4
    DOI: 10.1007/s11150-022-09644-4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11150-022-09644-4
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11150-022-09644-4?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Clark, Andrew E. & Etilé, Fabrice, 2011. "Happy house: Spousal weight and individual well-being," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(5), pages 1124-1136.
    2. Sonia Oreffice & Climent Quintana-Domeque, 2012. "Fat spouses and hours of work: are body and Pareto weights correlated?," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 1(1), pages 1-21, December.
    3. Asgeirsdottir, Tinna Laufey & Birgisdottir, Kristin Helga & Ólafsdóttir, Thorhildur & Olafsson, Sigurdur Pall, 2017. "A compensating income variation approach to valuing 34 health conditions in Iceland," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 27(PA), pages 167-183.
    4. Paul McNamee & Silvia Mendolia, 2019. "Changes in health-related quality of life: a compensating income variation approach," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(6), pages 639-650, February.
    5. Amy Finkelstein & Erzo F. P. Luttmer & Matthew J. Notowidigdo, 2013. "What Good Is Wealth Without Health? The Effect Of Health On The Marginal Utility Of Consumption," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11, pages 221-258, January.
    6. Blanchflower, David G. & Oswald, Andrew J., 2008. "Is well-being U-shaped over the life cycle?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(8), pages 1733-1749, April.
    7. Howley, Peter, 2017. "Less money or better health? Evaluating individual’s willingness to make trade-offs using life satisfaction data," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 53-65.
    8. Tomas Philipson, 2001. "The world‐wide growth in obesity: an economic research agenda," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 10(1), pages 1-7, January.
    9. Joseph Sabia & Daniel Rees, 2015. "Body weight, mental health capital, and academic achievement," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 653-684, September.
    10. Ada Ferrer‐i‐Carbonell & Bernard M.S. van Praag, 2002. "The subjective costs of health losses due to chronic diseases. An alternative model for monetary appraisal," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 11(8), pages 709-722, December.
    11. Ólafsdóttir, Thorhildur & Ásgeirsdóttir, Tinna Laufey & Norton, Edward C., 2020. "Valuing pain using the subjective well-being method," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 37(C).
    12. Kazuma Sato, 2021. "Relationship between marital status and body mass index in Japan," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 19(3), pages 813-841, September.
    13. Nattavudh Powdthavee, 2010. "How much does money really matter? Estimating the causal effects of income on happiness," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 39(1), pages 77-92, August.
    14. Erik Lindqvist & Robert Östling & David Cesarini, 2020. "Long-Run Effects of Lottery Wealth on Psychological Well-Being," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 87(6), pages 2703-2726.
    15. Marina Selini Katsaiti, 2012. "Obesity and happiness," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(31), pages 4101-4114, November.
    16. Huang, Li & Frijters, Paul & Dalziel, Kim & Clarke, Philip, 2018. "Life satisfaction, QALYs, and the monetary value of health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 211(C), pages 131-136.
    17. Emily Oster, 2019. "Unobservable Selection and Coefficient Stability: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(2), pages 187-204, April.
    18. Meyler, Deanna & Stimpson, Jim P. & Peek, M. Kristen, 2007. "Health concordance within couples: A systematic review," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(11), pages 2297-2310, June.
    19. Willage, Barton, 2018. "The effect of weight on mental health: New evidence using genetic IVs," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 113-130.
    20. Cawley, John, 2015. "An economy of scales: A selective review of obesity's economic causes, consequences, and solutions," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 244-268.
    21. Powdthavee, Nattavudh & van den Berg, Bernard, 2011. "Putting different price tags on the same health condition: Re-evaluating the well-being valuation approach," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(5), pages 1032-1043.
    22. Deaton, Angus & Arora, Raksha, 2009. "Life at the top: The benefits of height," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 133-136, July.
    23. Shoshana Grossbard & Sankar Mukhopadhyay, 2017. "Marriage markets as explanation for why heavier people work more hours," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 6(1), pages 1-30, December.
    24. Wim Groot & Henriëtte Maassen van den Brink, 2006. "The compensating income variation of cardiovascular disease," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 15(10), pages 1143-1148, October.
    25. Paul McNamee & Silvia Mendolia & Oleg Yerokhin, 2021. "The transmission of partner mental health to individual life satisfaction: Estimates from a longitudinal household survey," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 68(4), pages 494-516, September.
    26. McNamee, Paul & Mendolia, Silvia, 2014. "The effect of chronic pain on life satisfaction: Evidence from Australian data," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 65-73.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Baldursdottir, Kristjana & Asgeirsdottir, Tinna Laufey & Olafsdottir, Thorhildur, 2023. "How sensitive is the compensating income variation to severity and adaptation?," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    2. Tinna Laufey Ásgeirsdóttir & Arnar Buason & Ásthildur Margrét Jóhannsdóttir, 2023. "Valuing the Wellbeing Associated with Psychosocial Factors at Work," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 18(4), pages 1737-1759, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Baldursdottir, Kristjana & Asgeirsdottir, Tinna Laufey & Olafsdottir, Thorhildur, 2023. "How sensitive is the compensating income variation to severity and adaptation?," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    2. Ólafsdóttir, Thorhildur & Ásgeirsdóttir, Tinna Laufey & Norton, Edward C., 2020. "Valuing pain using the subjective well-being method," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 37(C).
    3. Patel, Pankaj C. & Tsionas, Mike G. & Oghazi, Pejvak, 2023. "Compensating income variation in health and subjective well-being for the self-employed," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).
    4. Tinna Laufey Ásgeirsdóttir & Arnar Buason & Ásthildur Margrét Jóhannsdóttir, 2023. "Valuing the Wellbeing Associated with Psychosocial Factors at Work," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 18(4), pages 1737-1759, August.
    5. Mendolia, Silvia & McNamee, Paul & Yerokhin, Oleg, 2018. "The Transmission of Mental Health within Households: Does One Partner's Mental Health Influence the Other Partner's Life Satisfaction?," IZA Discussion Papers 11431, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. McDonald, Rebecca & Powdthavee, Nattavudh, 2018. "The Shadow Prices of Voluntary Caregiving: Using Panel Data of Well-Being to Estimate the Cost of Informal Care," IZA Discussion Papers 11545, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Howley, Peter, 2017. "Less money or better health? Evaluating individual’s willingness to make trade-offs using life satisfaction data," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 53-65.
    8. Stöckel, Jannis & van Exel, Job & Brouwer, Werner B.F., 2023. "Adaptation in life satisfaction and self-assessed health to disability - Evidence from the UK," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 328(C).
    9. Paul McNamee & Silvia Mendolia & Oleg Yerokhin, 2021. "The transmission of partner mental health to individual life satisfaction: Estimates from a longitudinal household survey," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 68(4), pages 494-516, September.
    10. Howley, P., 2016. "Valuing the benefits from health care interventions using life satisfaction data," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 16/01, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    11. Sebastian Himmler & Jannis Stöckel & Job van Exel & Werner B. F. Brouwer, 2021. "The value of health—Empirical issues when estimating the monetary value of a quality‐adjusted life year based on well‐being data," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(8), pages 1849-1870, August.
    12. Fink Simonsen, Nicolai & Kjær, Trine, 2021. "New Evidence of Health State Dependent Utility of Consumption: A combined survey and register study," DaCHE discussion papers 2021:2, University of Southern Denmark, Dache - Danish Centre for Health Economics.
    13. Dusanee Kesavayuth & Robert Rosenman & Vasileios Zikos, 2013. "Does Personality Affect how People Perceive their Health?," Working Papers 2013-13, School of Economic Sciences, Washington State University.
    14. Brad R. Humphreys & Bruce K. Johnson & John C. Whitehead, 2020. "Validity and reliability of contingent valuation and life satisfaction measures of welfare: An application to the value of national Olympic success," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 87(1), pages 316-330, July.
    15. Sarrias, Mauricio, 2021. "A two recursive equation model to correct for endogeneity in latent class binary probit models," Journal of choice modelling, Elsevier, vol. 40(C).
    16. Dolan, Paul & Fujiwara, Daniel & Metcalfe, Robert, 2011. "A step towards valuing utility the marginal and cardinal way," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 121714, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    17. Strulik, Holger, 2021. "From pain patient to junkie: An economic theory of painkiller consumption and its impact on wellbeing and longevity," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    18. McNamee, Paul & Mendolia, Silvia, 2014. "The effect of chronic pain on life satisfaction: Evidence from Australian data," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 65-73.
    19. Ehsan Latif, 2012. "Monetary valuation of cardiovascular disease in Canada," Economics and Business Letters, Oviedo University Press, vol. 1(1), pages 46-52.
    20. Sebastian Himmler & Jannis Stöckel & Job van Exel & Werner Brouwer, 2020. "The Value of Health - Empirical Issues when Estimating the Monetary Value of a QALY Based on Well-Being," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 1101, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Body mass index; Spouse; Compensating income variation; Life satisfaction obesity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • I14 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Inequality
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:reveho:v:21:y:2023:i:4:d:10.1007_s11150-022-09644-4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.