Climate Preferences, Obesity, and Unobserved Heretogeneity in Cities

Some sources of heterogeneity among cities, i.e. age, gender, race, income, and education, have been the object of substantial inquiry. The reasons are obvious. These differences are easily observed and may have important implications for economic activity. This study considers another potentially important population characteristic, obesity. Descriptive statistics reveal that the intercity variance in obesity rates is substantial. Empirical results demonstrate that demographic and regional amenity variables all have a relation to intercity differences in obesity. Because obesity is important for climate preferences, performance, and productivity, its omission from previous studies and its correlation with amenity and demographic characteristics, could create problems for empirical research. For example, it is possible to explain the recent climate preference finding by Sinha and Cropper (2015) that willingness to pay for higher summer temperature is negatively correlated, Ï = − 0.83, with preferences for higher winter temperatures.