Obesity

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Charles Barkley and the Nanny State

May 27, 2010 in Obesity | 2 comments

Michelle Obama’s is deeply involved in her recently involved in fight against childhood obesity.  Eating healthy and exercising more is a laudable goal.  But do we want the government operatives taking the role of a Biggest Loser Drill Sergent?  Could government weight monitoring become a reality?

Maybe. In an interview with Marv Albert, President Barack Obama had a question for Charles Barkley:

“I know you say you’re not a role model, but the first lady has been working on this childhood obesity thing and she wants to know if you are setting a good example by getting your exercise and eating right.  If you could give an honest response, because I have ways of checking up. I’ve got a lot of intelligence operations around. We’ve got hidden cameras everywhere. Let us know, are you, in fact, sticking to your diet?”

Although the President’s comments should be taken lightheartedly, the government does face a conundrum.  Obesity reduction efforts that implore individuals to lose weight likely won’t have any teeth (pun-intended).  Just saying ‘pretty please’ or trying to make people feel guilty about being fat will only have a moderate effect on weight loss and could even increase the incidence of eating disorders.  On the other hand, the government could impose penalties (e.g., higher premiums) for overweight individuals who receive government-run healthcare (e.g., Medicare and Medicaid).

In this case, the President’s threats may not be a laughing matter.

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Marriage makes you fat

September 24, 2009 in My Papers | 1 comment

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 reason marriage causes weight gain is that individual who get married experience a decreased incentive to maintain their weight in order to attract a significant other (read the paper).  These findings were also presented at the Western Economic Association International (WEAI) conference in Vancouver this June.  Below is an abstract of the paper:

Married individuals weigh more on average than non-married individuals. We suggest that exiting the dating market decreases ones incentive to maintain their appearance and leads to an increase in body weight. We hypothesize that it is most difficult for individuals to exit a traditional marriage, and easiest for individuals to exit if the couple is cohabitating but not legally married. Using a 14-year panel data set, we test whether or not the ease of exiting a domestic relationship affects weight gain. For men, we find that the type of domestic relationship has little impact on weight gain. For women, however, marriage leads to a 2.4 kg weight gain compared to cohabitating.

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Should Uncle Sam feed Seniors cheesesteaks or cantaloupe?

August 17, 2009 in Obesity | 1 comment

Obesity is  growing problem in the United States.  As more people become increasingly obese, mortality rates will increase (or at least decrease less slowly than would have otherwise been the case).  However, increased mortality may be a blessing for Uncle Sam.  As more elderly die earlier from obesity-related diseases, the government will be able to reduce its fiscal responsibility to pay for health care for these individuals.  In an earlier post, I cited a study that found that a rise in obesity can save governments money.

Another study by Michaud et al. (2009) has contradicted this finding.  While obese individuals will have shorter life expectancies, they do have higher health care costs in each year in which they live.  Taking into account a variety of trends that affect life expectancy–such as obesity and diabetes–Michaud and co-authors find that “Together, the reduction in smoking and the rise in obesity have increased net public-sector liabilities by $430bn, or approximately 4% of the current debt burden. Larger effects are observed for specific public programs: annual spending is 10% higher in the Medicaid program, and 7% higher for Medicare.”

It seems like it pays for Uncle Sam to feed grandma cantaloupe and not cheesesteaks.

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Health Insurance Makes You Fat

July 22, 2009 in Obesity | 4 comments

In my own research, I have examined the relationship to marriage and weight gain.  

A study by Jay Bhattacharya, Kate Bundorf, Noemi Pace and Neeraj Sood found that health insurance may actually increase body mass.  According to the authors: “We find weak evidence that more generous insurance coverage increases body mass index. We find stronger evidence that being insured increases body mass index and obesity.”

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Spend more time eating, Weigh Less

May 6, 2009 in Obesity | No comments

According to Economix, countries whose people spend more time eating have a lower obesity rates.

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Overweight Children: Rural vs. Urban

April 2, 2009 in Obesity | No comments

Rural children are more likely to be overweight than urban children, despite the fact that children living in urban areas engage in less physical activity.

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Cigarette taxes are bad for your health?

January 5, 2009 in Obesity, Taxes | No comments

Many economists and public plicy researchers have found that cigarette taxes reduce smoking.  This means that cigarette taxes must be good for your health…right?

A study by Baum (2009) claims that cigarette taxes may improve health, but not by as much as previously thought.  The paper finds that increasing the cigarette tax decreases smoking, but decreased smoking–an appetite suprressant–increases obesity.  Thus Baum finds that the health benefits of cigarette taxes may be overstated.

Disclaimer: Baum does state that “this research in no way concludes that [cigarette taxes] should be decreased to prompt weight loss.”

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Marriage and weight gain

November 17, 2008 in Obesity | No comments

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 the average American male and female, this translates into a 4.8 pound increase for men and a 5.6 pound increase for women.  

Getting divorced actually decreases BMI.  The coefficients estimated were -0.27 for men and -0.63 for women; this translates into weight losses of 1.8 pounds for men and 3.7 pounds for women.  

The authors also found that “spouses tend to become more similar in body weight over time, indicating that environmental influences are an important cause of spouse weight similarity.”

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Happiness and body image

October 31, 2008 in Miscellaneous | Permalink

Many Americans are dissatisfied with how they look.  They want to be thinner or have bigger muscles or have larger breasts or have fuller lips.  The diet industry, the plastic surgery industry, the fitness industry all make money because people are dissatisfied with how they look.  How can you be happy with your looks?

As an economist, I will explain this with mathematics.

Let the variable I be your ideal body type which is measured on a scale from 1 to 10.  When I=10, this can represent the body of a supermodel of your choice.

Your current body type is measured by the variable B, also measured on a scale from 1 to 10.  Let us assume that for the average person, B=5 and I=9.

Your happiness is a function of how far your body type is from your ideal body type.  We can construct a utility function where happiness, H, is equal to a function of the difference between your body type and the ideal body type [i.e., H = f(-(I-B))].

There are two ways to improve your happiness.  The first is to make yourself look better through diet, exercise or the extreme measure of plastic surgery.  This can increase your body type factor, B, moving it closer to your ideal image, I.  However, no matter how much you diet or exercise, you likely will only be able to increase your body type by one or two units.  Further, as you age the level your body type will necessarily decrease.  Thus, maintaining an unrealistic ideal, I, and trying to increase your body type to reach I will be a frustrating process.

The other choice you can make is to change I.  If you make your ideal body very close to what your body looks like now, you will by definition be very satisfied with your body.  I am not advocating that you should never exercise or eat only junk food; these behaviors will adversely affect your health.  However, altering your ideal body image to be more in line with your present body type will make you happier.  This is of course easier said than done (especially for many of my peers who live in Southern California).  However, changing your expectations and learning to be satisfied with the body you have will make you happy.

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Wal-Mart reduces obesity

September 10, 2008 in Obesity | Permalink

Wal-Mart increases real incomes by lowering prices.  The purchasing power increase makes buying fresh fruit and vegetables more affordable for the average consumer.  At least this is what Charles Courtemanche and Art Carden found.

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