IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ris/uncgec/2009_001.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Silver Lining? The Connection Between Gasoline Prices and Obesity

Author

Listed:
  • Charles Courtemanche

    (University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Department of Economics)

Abstract

I find evidence of a negative association between gasoline prices and body weight using a fixed effects model with several robustness checks. I also show that increases in gas prices are associated with additional walking and a reduction in the frequency with which people eat at restaurants, explaining their effect on weight. My estimates imply that 8% of the rise in obesity between 1979 and 2004 can be attributed to the concurrent drop in real gas prices, and that a permanent $1 increase in gasoline prices would reduce overweight and obesity in the U.S. by 7% and 10%.

Suggested Citation

  • Charles Courtemanche, 2008. "A Silver Lining? The Connection Between Gasoline Prices and Obesity," UNCG Economics Working Papers 09-1, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:uncgec:2009_001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://bryan.uncg.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/09-01.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Gas price; obesity; body weight; gasoline price; gasoline; transportation; restaurants;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General

    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:ris:uncgec:2009_001. 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: Albert Link (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/edncgus.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.