IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/femeco/v28y2022i1p199-231.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Double Burden of Being A Woman and Obese: Evidence from the Chilean Labor Market

Author

Listed:
  • Mauricio Sarrias
  • Victor Iturra

Abstract

This study analyzes the labor market dimension of a worldwide social concern: the growing level of obesity. Using detailed, individual information of Chilean workers, the study finds a strong evidence of a wage penalty for women as body size increases, whereas men seemingly enjoy a wage premium for being overweight. Several hypotheses are tested for explaining this finding and results suggest that the gender wage gap between obese and non-obese workers is not related to observed productivity differences, risk aversion, or health limitations. For women, the wage penalty is mostly explained by occupational crowding and the “beauty premium” in high-skilled occupations. Finally, this study outlines possible avenues that future research should address.HIGHLIGHTS Women are more likely to experience a weight penalty in labor markets than men.Heavier women earn less per hour than thinner coworkers in Chile.Overweight men experience a wage premium.Wage differences between obese and non-obese women cannot be explained by observable endowments.The wage penalty is larger in occupations requiring more social interactions.

Suggested Citation

  • Mauricio Sarrias & Victor Iturra, 2022. "The Double Burden of Being A Woman and Obese: Evidence from the Chilean Labor Market," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(1), pages 199-231, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:femeco:v:28:y:2022:i:1:p:199-231
    DOI: 10.1080/13545701.2021.1988127
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13545701.2021.1988127
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13545701.2021.1988127?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 search for a different version of it.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Sarrias, Mauricio & Blanco, Alejandra, 2022. "Bodyweight and human capital development: Assessing the impact of obesity on socioemotional skills during childhood in Chile," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 47(C).

    More about this item

    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:taf:femeco:v:28:y:2022:i:1:p:199-231. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RFEC20 .

    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.