IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedhep/y2008iqip2-16nv.32no.1.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Obesity, disability, and the labor force

Author

Listed:
  • Kristin F. Butcher
  • Kyung-Hong Park

Abstract

Men of prime working age have increased their non-employment rates over the past 30 years, and disability rates have also increased. Many have noted that this increase has happened against a backdrop of generally improving health in the U.S. population. However, obesity has increased substantially over this period. The authors find that changes in the characteristics of male workers?including age, race, ethnicity, and obesity levels?can explain a large portion (around 40 percent) of the increase in non-employment.

Suggested Citation

  • Kristin F. Butcher & Kyung-Hong Park, 2008. "Obesity, disability, and the labor force," Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, vol. 32(Q I), pages 2-16.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedhep:y:2008:i:qi:p:2-16:n:v.32no.1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.chicagofed.org/digital_assets/publications/economic_perspectives/2008/ep_1qtr2008_part1_butcher_park.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chinhui Juhn & Kevin Murphy & Robert Topel, 2002. "Current Unemployment, Historically Contemplated," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 33(1), pages 79-136.
    2. Oaxaca, Ronald, 1973. "Male-Female Wage Differentials in Urban Labor Markets," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 14(3), pages 693-709, October.
    3. Anderson Katharine & Barrow Lisa & Butcher Kristin F., 2005. "Implications of Changes in Men's and Women's Labor Force Participation for Real Compensation Growth and Inflation," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 5(1), pages 1-27, March.
    4. John Cawley & Sheldon Danziger, 2004. "Obesity as a Barrier to the Transition from Welfare to Work," NBER Working Papers 10508, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. David M. Cutler & Elizabeth Richardson, 1997. "Measuring the Health of the U.S. Population," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 28(1997 Micr), pages 217-282.
    6. Daniel Aaronson & Kyung-Hong Park & Daniel G. Sullivan, 2006. "The decline in teen labor force participation," Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, vol. 30(Q I), pages 2-18.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Temesgen Kifle & Isaac Desta, 2012. "The relationship between body mass index and socioeconomic and demographic indicators: evidence from Australia," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 57(1), pages 135-142, February.
    2. Patricia I. Ritter & Ricardo Sanchez, 2019. "Twice Unlucky: From Early-Life Cholera Exposure to Adult COVID-19 Mortality," Working papers 2019-16, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics, revised Aug 2023.
    3. Anderson, Patricia M. & Butcher, Kristin F. & Schanzenbach, Diane Whitmore, 2019. "Understanding recent trends in childhood obesity in the United States," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 16-25.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lisa Barrow & Kristin F. Butcher, 2004. "Not working: demographic changes, policy changes, and the distribution of weeks (not) worked," Working Paper Series WP-04-23, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    2. Lakdawalla, Darius N. & Sun, Eric C. & Jena, Anupam B. & Reyes, Carolina M. & Goldman, Dana P. & Philipson, Tomas J., 2010. "An economic evaluation of the war on cancer," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 333-346, May.
    3. Thomas Y. Mathä & Alessandro Porpiglia & Michael Ziegelmeyer, 2014. "Wealth differences across borders and the effect of real estate price dynamics: Evidence from two household surveys," BCL working papers 90, Central Bank of Luxembourg.
    4. Kristina Burström & Magnus Johannesson & Finn Diderichsen, 2003. "The value of the change in health in Sweden 1980/81 to 1996/97," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(8), pages 637-654, August.
    5. Matias Busso & Patrick Kline, 2008. "Do Local Economic Development Programs Work? Evidence from the Federal Empowerment Zone Program," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1639, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    6. Marco Caliendo & Frank M. Fossen & Alexander Kritikos & Miriam Wetter, 2015. "The Gender Gap in Entrepreneurship: Not just a Matter of Personality," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 61(1), pages 202-238.
    7. Alison L. Booth, 2006. "The Glass Ceiling in Europe: Why Are Women Doing Badly in the Labour Market?," CEPR Discussion Papers 542, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    8. Heather Antecol & Kelly Bedard, 2004. "The Racial Wage Gap: The Importance of Labor Force Attachment Differences across Black, Mexican, and White Men," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 39(2).
    9. Valentine Fays & Benoît Mahy & François Rycx, 2023. "Wage differences according to workers' origin: The role of working more upstream in GVCs," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 37(2), pages 319-342, June.
    10. Michael E. Martell & Peyton Nash, 2020. "For Love and Money? Earnings and Marriage Among Same-Sex Couples," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 41(3), pages 260-294, September.
    11. Heitmueller, Axel, 2005. "A Note on Decompositions in Fixed Effects Models in the Presence of Time-Invariant Characteristics," IZA Discussion Papers 1886, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Howard Bodenhorn & Christopher Ruebeck, 2007. "Colourism and African–american wealth: evidence from the nineteenth-century south," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 20(3), pages 599-620, July.
    13. Huong Thu Le & Ha Trong Nguyen, 2018. "The evolution of the gender test score gap through seventh grade: new insights from Australia using unconditional quantile regression and decomposition," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 7(1), pages 1-42, December.
    14. Ida Camminatiello & Rosaria Lombardo & Mario Musella & Gianmarco Borrata, 2024. "A Model for Evaluating Inequalities in Sustainability," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 175(3), pages 879-898, December.
    15. Rania Gihleb & Osnat Lifshitz, 2022. "Dynamic Effects of Educational Assortative Mating on Labor Supply," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 46, pages 302-327, October.
    16. Ward-Warmedinger, Melanie E., 1999. "Salary and the Gender Salary Gap in the Academic Profession," IZA Discussion Papers 64, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. Sieds, 2017. "Complete Volume LXXI n. 3 2017," RIEDS - Rivista Italiana di Economia, Demografia e Statistica - The Italian Journal of Economic, Demographic and Statistical Studies, SIEDS Societa' Italiana di Economia Demografia e Statistica, vol. 71(3), pages 1-150, July-Sept.
    18. Ilhom Abdulloev & Ira N Gang & Myeong-Su Yun, 2014. "Migration, Education and the Gender Gap in Labour Force Participation," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 26(4), pages 509-526, September.
    19. Borooah, Vani K., 2004. "Gender bias among children in India in their diet and immunisation against disease," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 58(9), pages 1719-1731, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Obesity; Unemployment;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedhep:y:2008:i:qi:p:2-16:n:v.32no.1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lauren Wiese (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbchus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.