Lundborg Petter, Nystedt Paul, Rooth Dan-Olof
Centre for Economic Demography, and HEP, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
Demography. 2014 Oct;51(5):1573-96. doi: 10.1007/s13524-014-0325-6.
We provide new evidence on the long-run labor market penalty of teenage overweight and obesity using unique and large-scale data on 150,000 male siblings from the Swedish military enlistment. Our empirical analysis provides four important results. First, we provide the first evidence of a large adult male labor market penalty for being overweight or obese as a teenager. Second, we replicate this result using data from the United States and the United Kingdom. Third, we note a strikingly strong within-family relationship between body size and cognitive skills/noncognitive skills. Fourth, a large part of the estimated body-size penalty reflects lower skill acquisition among overweight and obese teenagers. Taken together, these results reinforce the importance of policy combating early-life obesity in order to reduce healthcare expenditures as well as poverty and inequalities later in life.
我们利用来自瑞典军队征兵的150,000名男性兄弟姐妹的独特大规模数据，提供了关于青少年超重和肥胖对长期劳动力市场惩罚的新证据。我们的实证分析得出了四个重要结果。第一，我们首次提供了证据，证明青少年时期超重或肥胖会对成年男性劳动力市场造成巨大惩罚。第二，我们利用美国和英国的数据复制了这一结果。第三，我们注意到体型与认知技能/非认知技能之间在家庭内部存在着惊人的紧密关系。第四，估计的体型惩罚很大一部分反映了超重和肥胖青少年技能习得较低的情况。综合来看，这些结果强化了应对早期肥胖政策的重要性，以便在日后减少医疗保健支出以及贫困和不平等现象。
