Marriage makes you fat

Researches at UNC found that marriage may make you happy and healthy but fat as well.  If you’ve been a loyal reader of the Healthcare Economist, however, you knew that already. Jason Shafrin’s research on marriage and weight gain already showed that marriage leads to increased weight gain.  In fact, the research demonstrated that one…

Are all the good men married?

Does marriage cause men’s wages to rise?  This is the question addressed by UCSD professor Kate Antonovics and Robert Town in their 2004 paper in AER cleverly titled “Are all the good men married?” It has been shown that married men earn more money than non-married men with similar characteristics.  Why is this?  A few…

Marriage and weight gain

Do people gain weight after marriage?  A paper by Jeffrey and Rick (2002) says yes.  Using data collected from 2528 workers over a 2 year period, the authors estimated the effect of marriage and divorce on weight gain.  They found the following: Getting married increases BMI by 0.70 for men and 0.96 for women.  For…

Marital Status and Body Weight Changes

Why do people want to lose weight? While this seems like an obvious question, it does merit answering. There are two major reasons: health concerns and appearance. Being obese increases the risk of suffering from many diseases (e.g.: diabetes). On the appearance side, individuals may experience social pressure to lose (or possibly gain) weight. Further,…

Marriage and Obesity

Are married people more likely to be obese than single individuals? More to the point, does being married cause obesity? Married individuals are generally older than never-married individuals and since age is correlated with obesity, there could be a spurious relationship between marriage and obesity. One may think that married individuals are not on the…