IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp1704.html

Does Obesity Hurt Your Wages More in Dublin than in Madrid? Evidence from ECHP

Author

Listed:
  • d'Hombres, Beatrice

    (European Commission)

  • Brunello, Giorgio

    (University of Padova)

Abstract

We use data from the European Community Household Panel to investigate the impact of obesity on wages in 9 European countries, ranging from Ireland to Spain. We find that the common impact of obesity on wages is negative and statistically significant, independently of gender. Given the nature of European labor markets, however, we believe that a common impact is overly restrictive. When we allow this impact to vary across countries, we find a negative relationship between the BMI and wages in the countries of the European "olive belt" and a positive relationship in the countries of the "beer belt". We speculate that such difference could be driven by the interaction between the weather, BMI and individual (unobserved) productivity.

Suggested Citation

  • d'Hombres, Beatrice & Brunello, Giorgio, 2005. "Does Obesity Hurt Your Wages More in Dublin than in Madrid? Evidence from ECHP," IZA Discussion Papers 1704, IZA Network @ LISER.
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp1704
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp1704.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Susan Averett & Sanders Korenman, 1996. "The Economic Reality of the Beauty Myth," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 31(2), pages 304-330.
    2. Becker, Gary S & Murphy, Kevin M, 1988. "A Theory of Rational Addiction," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(4), pages 675-700, August.
    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. Deng, Weiguang & Li, Dayang & Zhou, Dong, 2019. "Beauty and Job Accessibility: New Evidence from a Field Experiment," GLO Discussion Paper Series 369, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    2. Hübler, Olaf, 2006. "The Nonlinear Link between Height and Wages: An Empirical Investigation," IZA Discussion Papers 2394, IZA Network @ LISER.
    3. Rooth, Dan-Olof, 2007. "Evidence of Unequal Treatment in Hiring against Obese Applicants: A Field Experiment," IZA Discussion Papers 2775, IZA Network @ LISER.
    4. Nuñez, Roy, 2020. "Obesity and labor market in Peru," MPRA Paper 105621, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Fahr, René, 2006. "The Wage Effects of Social Norms: Evidence of Deviations from Peers’ Body-Mass in Europe," IZA Discussion Papers 2323, IZA Network @ LISER.
    6. Weiguang Deng & Dayang Li & Dong Zhou, 2020. "Beauty and job accessibility: new evidence from a field experiment," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 33(4), pages 1303-1341, October.
    7. Raymundo M. Campos-Vazquez & Roy Nuñez, 2019. "Obesity and labor market outcomes in Mexico/Obesidad y el mercado de trabajo en México," Estudios Económicos, El Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Económicos, vol. 34(2), pages 159-196.

    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. Tomas Philipson & Richard Posner, 2008. "Is the Obesity Epidemic a Public Health Problem? A Decade of Research on the Economics of Obesity," NBER Working Papers 14010, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Mary A. Burke & Frank Heiland, 2007. "Social Dynamics Of Obesity," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 45(3), pages 571-591, July.
    3. Peter J. Huckfeldt & Darius N. Lakdawalla & Tomas J. Philipson, 2012. "Economics of Obesity," Chapters, in: Andrew M. Jones (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Health Economics, Second Edition, chapter 7, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Charles L. Baum & William F. Ford, 2004. "The wage effects of obesity: a longitudinal study," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 13(9), pages 885-899, September.
    5. Marina Kolosnitsyna & Arina Berdnikova, 2009. "Overweight: What Are its Costs and What Could Be Done?," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 15(3), pages 72-93.
    6. Odelia Rosin, 2008. "The Economic Causes Of Obesity: A Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(4), pages 617-647, September.
    7. Avner Offer, 1998. "Epidemics of Abundance: Overeating and Slimming in the USA and Britain since the 1950s," Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers _025, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    8. Ziggy MacDonald & Stephen Pudney, 2001. "Illicit drug use and labour market achievement: evidence from the UK," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(13), pages 1655-1668.
    9. Goulão, Catarina & Lacomba, Juan Antonio & Lagos, Francisco & Rooth, Dan-Olof, 2024. "Weight, attractiveness, and gender when hiring: A field experiment in Spain," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 218(C), pages 132-145.
    10. Hammar, Henrik & Carlsson, Fredrik, 2001. "Smokers' Decisions To Quit Smoking," Working Papers in Economics 59, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    11. Nan Yang & Yong Long Lim, 2018. "Temporary Incentives Change Daily Routines: Evidence from a Field Experiment on Singapore’s Subways," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(7), pages 3365-3379, July.
    12. Sonia Oreffice & Climent Quintana-Domeque, 2012. "A Matter of Weight? The Role of Spouses. Physical Attractiveness on Hours of Work," CHILD Working Papers Series 7, Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic Economics (CHILD) - CCA.
    13. Brad Humphreys & Jane Ruseski & Li Zhou, 2015. "Physical Activity, Present Bias, and Habit Formation: Theory and Evidence from Longitudinal Data," Working Papers 2015-06, University of Alberta, Department of Economics.
    14. Md. Alauddin Majumder, 2013. "Does Obesity Matter for Wages? Evidence from the United States," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 32(2), pages 200-217, June.
    15. Lurås, Hilde, 2009. "A healthy lifestyle: The product of opportunities and preferences," HERO Online Working Paper Series 2001:11, University of Oslo, Health Economics Research Programme.
    16. Elisabeth Gugl & Linda Welling, 2007. "The Early Bird gets the Worm? Birth Order Effects in a Dynamic Model of the Family," Department Discussion Papers 0710, Department of Economics, University of Victoria.
    17. Joseph P. Newhouse, 2021. "An Ounce of Prevention," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 35(2), pages 101-118, Spring.
    18. Freeman, Steven F., 1997. "Good decisions : reconciling human rationality, evolution, and ethics," Working papers WP 3962-97., Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
    19. Kristien Werck & Bruno Heyndels & Benny Geys, 2008. "The impact of ‘central places’ on spatial spending patterns: evidence from Flemish local government cultural expenditures," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 32(1), pages 35-58, March.
    20. Carlin, Paul S. & Kidd, Michael P. & Ulubaşoğlu, Mehmet A., 2013. "Does legal heritage affect obesity? The channel of motor vehicle dependence," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 621-633.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • J3 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:iza:izadps:dp1704. 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: Mark Fallak (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaalu.html .

    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.