Assessing the impact of obesity on labor market outcomes

Summary, in English

We study the effect of obesity on employment using rich data from the British National Child Development Study (NCDS) The results show a significant negative association between obesity and employment even after controlling for a rich set of demographic socioeconomic environmental and behavioral variables In order to account for the endogeneity of obesity we use and assess instruments Introduced by Cawley (2004) the obesity status of biological relatives Using parental obesity as an instrument we show that the association between obesity and employment is no longer significant Similar results are obtained in a model of first differences We provide a number of different checks on the instruments by exploiting the richness of the NCDS data The results show mixed evidence regarding the validity of the instruments

• Författare: Lindeboom Maarten; Petter Lundborg; van der Klaauw Bas
• Avdelning/ar: Nationalekonomiska institutionen
• Publiceringsår: 2010
• Språk: Engelska
• Sidor: 309-319
• Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie: Economics and Human Biology
• Volym: 8
• Issue: 3
• Länkar: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ehb.2010.08.004
• Dokumenttyp: Artikel i tidskrift
• Förlag: Elsevier
• Ämne: Economics
• Nyckelord: Obesity; Employment; Instruments; Panel data; Endogeneity
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt: ISSN: 1873-6130