IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/halshs-00754207.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Social norms, ideal body weight and food attitudes

Author

Listed:
  • Fabrice Etilé

    (CORELA - Laboratoire de Recherche sur la Consommation - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique)

Abstract

This paper uses French data on ideal body weight and food attitudes to analyse the role of social norms in the individual's weight control problem. A proxy measure of social norms is calculated by averaging individual perceptions of the ideal Body Mass Index (BMI) over all observations within a reference group. Testing for different definitions of the reference group, we find that individual representations of ideal body shape are differentiated mainly along gender and age lines. Social norms regarding body shape have a significant effect on perceptions of ideal BMI only for those women who want to lose weight, with an elasticity close to 0.5. For many women and for all men, ideal BMI is almost exclusively determined by habitual BMI. Last, ideal BMI predicts a number of attitudes towards food, while social norms do not. These results suggest that promoting medical norms regarding body shape should have little effect on individual food attitudes.

Suggested Citation

  • Fabrice Etilé, 2007. "Social norms, ideal body weight and food attitudes," Post-Print halshs-00754207, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-00754207
    DOI: 10.1002/hec.1251
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. George A. Akerlof, 1997. "Social Distance and Social Decisions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(5), pages 1005-1028, September.
    2. Andrew Grodner & Thomas J. Kniesner, 2008. "Labor supply with social interactions: econometric estimates and their tax policy implications," Research in Labor Economics, in: Work, Earnings and Other Aspects of the Employment Relation, pages 1-23, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    3. Susan Averett & Sanders Korenman, 1996. "The Economic Reality of the Beauty Myth," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 31(2), pages 304-330.
    4. James H. Stock & Motohiro Yogo, 2002. "Testing for Weak Instruments in Linear IV Regression," NBER Technical Working Papers 0284, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Jay Bhattacharya & M. Kate Bundorf, 2005. "The Incidence of the Healthcare Costs of Obesity," NBER Working Papers 11303, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Chou, Shin-Yi & Grossman, Michael & Saffer, Henry, 2004. "An economic analysis of adult obesity: results from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 565-587, May.
    7. Andrew Grodner & Thomas J. Kniesner, 2006. "Social Interactions in Labor Supply," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 4(6), pages 1226-1248, December.
    8. Tomas J. Philipson & Richard A. Posner, 1999. "The Long-Run Growth in Obesity as a Function of Technological Change," Working Papers 9912, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago.
    9. Charles F. Manski, 1993. "Identification of Endogenous Social Effects: The Reflection Problem," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(3), pages 531-542.
    10. Drewnowski, A. & Darmon, N. & Briend, A., 2004. "Replacing fats and sweets with vegetables and fruits - A question of cost," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 94(9), pages 1555-1559.
    11. Paquette, M.-C.Marie-Claude & Raine, Kim, 2004. "Sociocultural context of women's body image," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 59(5), pages 1047-1058, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Grodner, Andrew & Kniesner, Thomas J. & Bishop, John A., 2011. "Social Interactions in the Labor Market," Foundations and Trends(R) in Microeconomics, now publishers, vol. 6(4), pages 265-366, September.
    2. Eric Maurin & Julie Moschion, 2009. "The Social Multiplier and Labor Market Participation of Mothers," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(1), pages 251-272, January.
    3. Odelia Rosin, 2008. "The Economic Causes Of Obesity: A Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(4), pages 617-647, September.
    4. Tomas Philipson & Richard Posner, 2008. "Is the Obesity Epidemic a Public Health Problem? A Decade of Research on the Economics of Obesity," NBER Working Papers 14010, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Atella, Vincenzo & Pace, Noemi & Vuri, Daniela, 2008. "Are employers discriminating with respect to weight?: European Evidence using Quantile Regression," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 305-329, December.
    6. Collewet, M.M.F. & de Grip, A. & Koning, J.d., 2015. "Peer working time, labour supply, and happiness for male workers," ROA Research Memorandum 006, Maastricht University, Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA).
    7. Collewet, Marion & de Grip, Andries & de Koning, Jaap, 2017. "Conspicuous work: Peer working time, labour supply, and happiness," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 79-90.
    8. Pieroni, Luca & Salmasi, Luca, 2010. "Body weight and socio-economic determinants: quantile estimations from the British Household Panel Survey," ISER Working Paper Series 2010-41, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    9. Clark, Andrew E. & Etilé, Fabrice, 2011. "Happy house: Spousal weight and individual well-being," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(5), pages 1124-1136.
    10. Euna Han & Edward C. Norton & Sally C. Stearns, 2009. "Weight and wages: fat versus lean paychecks," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(5), pages 535-548, May.
    11. Charles L. Baum, 2009. "The effects of cigarette costs on BMI and obesity," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(1), pages 3-19, January.
    12. Heather Brown & Arne Risa Hole & Jennifer Roberts, 2010. "Going the same 'weigh': spousal correlations in obesity in the UK," Working Papers 2010012, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics, revised Jun 2010.
    13. Kolosnitsyna, Marina & Berdnikova, Arina, 2009. "Overweight: What Are its Costs and What Could Be Done?," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 15(3), pages 72-93.
    14. Ángel L. Martín‐Román & Jaime Cuéllar‐Martín & Alfonso Moral, 2020. "Labor supply and the business cycle: The “bandwagon worker effect”," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 99(6), pages 1607-1642, December.
    15. Jaume García Villar & Sonia Oreffice & Climent Quintana-Domeque, 2011. "Physical Activity and Obesity in Spain: Evidence from the Spanish National Health Survey," Chapters, in: Plácido Rodríguez & Stefan Késenne & Brad R. Humphreys (ed.), The Economics of Sport, Health and Happiness, chapter 3, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    16. Auld, M. Christopher, 2011. "Effect of large-scale social interactions on body weight," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 303-316, March.
    17. Byela Tibesigwa & Martine Visser & Brennan Hodkinson, 2016. "Effects of Objective and Subjective Income Comparisons on Subjective Wellbeing," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 128(1), pages 361-389, August.
    18. Peter J. Huckfeldt & Darius N. Lakdawalla & Tomas J. Philipson, 2012. "Economics of Obesity," Chapters, in: Andrew M. Jones (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Health Economics, Second Edition, chapter 7, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    19. Mary A. Burke & Frank Heiland, 2007. "Social Dynamics Of Obesity," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 45(3), pages 571-591, July.
    20. Jones, A. & Rice, N. & Rosa Dias, P., 2010. "Long-term effects of cognitive skills, social adjustment and schooling on health and lifestyle: Evidence from a reform of selective schooling," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 10/11, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.

    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:hal:journl:halshs-00754207. 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.