Meng Fan, Nie Peng, Sousa-Poza Alfonso
Institute for Health Care & Public Management, University of Hohenheim, 70599, Stuttgart, Germany.
School of Economics and Finance, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, 710061, China.
Health Econ Rev. 2023 Feb 21;13(1):14. doi: 10.1186/s13561-023-00426-x.
Previous literature documents the direct and indirect economic costs of obesity, yet none has attempted to quantify the intangible costs of obesity. This study focuses on quantifying the intangible costs of one unit body mass index (BMI) increase and being overweight and obese in Germany.
By applying a life satisfaction-based compensation value analysis to 2002-2018 German Socio-Economic Panel Survey data for adults aged 18-65, the intangible costs of overweight and obesity are estimated. We apply individual income as a reference for estimating the value of the loss of subjective well-being due to overweight and obesity.
The intangible costs of overweight and obesity in 2018 amount to 42,450 and 13,853 euros, respectively. A one unit increase in BMI induced a 2553 euros annual well-being loss in the overweight and obese relative to those of normal weight. When extrapolated to the entire country, this figure represents approximately 4.3 billion euros, an intangible cost of obesity similar in magnitude to the direct and indirect costs documented in other studies for Germany. These losses, our analysis reveals, have remained remarkably stable since 2002.
Our results underscore how existing research into obesity's economic toll may underestimate its true costs, and they strongly imply that if obesity interventions took the intangible costs of obesity into account, the economic benefits would be considerably larger.
以往文献记录了肥胖的直接和间接经济成本，但尚无研究试图量化肥胖的无形代价。本研究聚焦于量化德国单位体重指数（BMI）增加以及超重和肥胖的无形代价。
通过对2002 - 2018年德国社会经济面板调查中18 - 65岁成年人的数据应用基于生活满意度的补偿价值分析，估算超重和肥胖的无形代价。我们将个人收入作为估算因超重和肥胖导致的主观幸福感损失价值的参考。
2018年超重和肥胖的无形代价分别为42,450欧元和13,853欧元。与正常体重者相比，BMI每增加一个单位，超重和肥胖者每年的幸福感损失为2553欧元。推算至全国，这一数字约为43亿欧元，肥胖的无形代价规模与德国其他研究记录的直接和间接成本相近。我们的分析显示，自2002年以来，这些损失一直保持相当稳定。
我们的结果强调了现有关于肥胖经济代价的研究可能低估了其真实成本，并且强烈表明，如果肥胖干预措施考虑到肥胖的无形代价，经济效益将显著更大。
