Essays in labor and health economics: Economic effect of obesity on wages and its impact over time.

摘要

This dissertation presents estimates of the effect of weight on wages in the U.S. Several questions are of interest. Do heavier people earn lower wages? Are the effects of weight on wages evenly distributed over the whole range of wages or are the effects concentrated in the lower, middle or upper part of the wage distribution? Do the effects of weight on wages change over time? This dissertation uses two large data sets, the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth, NLSY79 and NLSY97, and several regression strategies in an attempt to provide answers to these questions. Differences across gender and race are explored.;The key finding is that weight lowers wages for white females. Negative correlations between weight and wages observed for other gender-ethnic groups appear to be due to unobserved heterogeneity. The results also suggested that the weight penalty, if it exists, increases with wages for almost all sub-groups except Black males. Finally, the negative effect of weight appears to have decreased when we compare the weight penalty between two cohorts, NLSY79 cohort and NLSY97 cohort, aged between 19 and 29. More research is needed so that we can gain insights about the causes of these penalties. It also provides incentives for policy makers to come up with policies that will help people attain and maintain a healthy weigh.