Brown Christian, Routon P Wesley
US Food and Drug Administration, 5001 Campus Drive, College Park, MD 20740, USA.
School of Business, Georgia Gwinnett College, 1000 University Center Lane, Lawrenceville, GA 30043, USA.
Econ Hum Biol. 2018 Feb;28:160-172. doi: 10.1016/j.ehb.2017.10.001. Epub 2017 Oct 19.
The economics literature supports a link between labor market measures, such as earnings, and health conditions, such as obesity. There is reason to believe the effects of obesity on wages may vary for high- and low-earning individuals and that obesity wage effects may evolve over a lifecycle or from generation to generation. Drawing on data from two longitudinal surveys, we estimate quantile and fixed effect quantile regressions, among others, to further examine the obesity wage effect. Results suggest an increasingly severe penalty across the wage distribution for females. Specifically, the highest-earning women may be penalized as much as five times that of the lowest earners. Results for males suggest that penalties may be present at select wage levels, while prior research has generally found no male obesity penalty. We also provide evidence that the obesity penalty has increased across generations and limited evidence that it may slow earnings growth over one's lifetime.
经济学文献支持劳动力市场指标（如收入）与健康状况（如肥胖）之间存在联系。有理由相信，肥胖对工资的影响可能因高收入和低收入个体而异，而且肥胖对工资的影响可能会在生命周期内或代代相传中发生变化。利用两项纵向调查的数据，我们估计了分位数回归和固定效应分位数回归等，以进一步研究肥胖对工资的影响。结果表明，女性在工资分布中受到的惩罚越来越严重。具体而言，收入最高的女性可能受到的惩罚是收入最低女性的五倍之多。男性的结果表明，在特定工资水平上可能存在惩罚，而先前的研究通常未发现男性因肥胖而受到惩罚。我们还提供证据表明，肥胖惩罚在代际之间有所增加，并且有有限的证据表明它可能会减缓一个人一生的收入增长。
