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Title: Socio-economic Status and Obesity in the U.S.:Gender and Income Really Matter

Citation Type: Conference Paper

Publication Year: 2014

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Abstract: The recent surge in obesity prevalence in the United States creates a huge concern in public and this paper mainly focuses on the economic side of this phenomenon, investigating the relationship between BMI and socio-economic-demographic factors in the United States, using data from Integrated Health Interview Series. Our research aims to improve the existing literature on two main aspects. First of all, we take care of the two identification issues: the endogeneity associated with income and different responses of BMI to an income increment across various quantiles of income distribution. Our empirical results show that SES indeed determines weight and obesity levels in the United States and the effect of income vary by gender and across BMI distributions. We find that the impact of income on BMI is negative and significant for females. However for males, the effect of income on obesity is nonlinear. The relationship is positive at the lower distribution tail, but negative at the upper distribution, indicating that males suffer from wage penalty at the bottom of the distribution.

Url: http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/170479/2/2014AAEA_SES and Obesity.pdf

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Authors: Xie, Ruizhi; Awokuse, Titus O.

Conference Name: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association's 2014 AAEA Annual Meeting

Publisher Location: Minneapolis, MN

Data Collections: IPUMS Health Surveys - NHIS

Topics: Health, Poverty and Welfare

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