IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/10508.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Obesity as a Barrier to the Transition from Welfare to Work

Author

Listed:
  • John Cawley
  • Sheldon Danziger

Abstract

This paper utilizes a rich longitudinal data set -- the Women's Employment Study (WES) to investigate whether obesity, which is common among women of low socioeconomic status, is a barrier to employment and earnings for current and former welfare recipients. We find evidence that, among current and former welfare recipients, high body weight is a greater barrier to labor market success for white women than for African-American women. Among white women, we consistently find a negative correlation between weight and labor market outcomes such as employment, hours worked, and earnings. Among African American women, weight is not correlated with employment, hours worked, or earnings, but it is correlated with the percentage of months spent on welfare between interviews. We provide suggestive evidence that these differences between white and African-American women in the relationship between body weight and labor market outcomes are partly due to differential weight-based discrimination in employment.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10508
    Note: EH LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w10508.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. John Cawley, 2004. "The Impact of Obesity on Wages," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 39(2).
    3. Rebecca M. Blank, 2002. "Evaluating Welfare Reform in the United States," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 40(4), pages 1105-1166, December.
    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. Hübler, Olaf, 2006. "The Nonlinear Link between Height and Wages: An Empirical Investigation," IZA Discussion Papers 2394, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Brunello, Giorgio & D'Hombres, Beatrice, 2007. "Does body weight affect wages?: Evidence from Europe," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 1-19, March.
    3. Lene Kromann, 2009. "Does Employee Body Weight Affect Employers' Behavior?," Economics Working Papers 2009-04, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    4. Lopez-Pablos, Rodrigo A., 2008. "Notas sobre Descomposiciones Microeconométricas: Un Análisis Antropométrico [Notes on Microeconometric Decompositions: An Anthropometric Analysis]," MPRA Paper 8222, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Rodrigo A. Lopez-Pablos, 2007. "Health Econometric:Uncovering the Anthropometric Behavior on Women's Labor Market," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 28(10), pages 1.
    6. Michael T. French & Edward C. Norton & Hai Fang & Johanna Catherine Maclean, 2010. "Alcohol consumption and body weight," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(7), pages 814-832, July.
    7. Rajeev Goel, 2006. "Obesity: An economic and financial perspective," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 30(3), pages 317-324, September.
    8. 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.
    9. Rosemary Ahn & Tae Hyun Kim & Euna Han, 2019. "The Moderation of Obesity Penalty on Job Market Outcomes by Employment Efforts," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(16), pages 1-13, August.
    10. McDonald, James Ted & Kennedy, Steven, 2005. "Is migration to Canada associated with unhealthy weight gain? Overweight and obesity among Canada's immigrants," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 61(12), pages 2469-2481, December.

    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. Goulão, Catarina & Lacomba, Juan Antonio & Lagos, Francisco & Rooth, Dan-Olof, 2024. "Weight, attractiveness, and gender when hiring: A field experiment in Spain," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 218(C), pages 132-145.
    2. Sonia Oreffice & Climent Quintana-Domeque, 2012. "A Matter of Weight? The Role of Spouses. Physical Attractiveness on Hours of Work," CHILD Working Papers Series 7, Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic Economics (CHILD) - CCA.
    3. Md. Alauddin Majumder, 2013. "Does Obesity Matter for Wages? Evidence from the United States," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 32(2), pages 200-217, June.
    4. Tao, Hung-Lin, 2014. "Height, weight, and entry earnings of female graduates in Taiwan," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 13(C), pages 85-98.
    5. Chih-Chien Huang & Scott T. Yabiku & Stephanie L. Ayers & Jennie J. Kronenfeld, 2016. "The obesity pay gap: gender, body size, and wage inequalities—a longitudinal study of Chinese adults, 1991–2011," Journal of Population Research, Springer, vol. 33(3), pages 221-242, September.
    6. Brunello, Giorgio & D'Hombres, Beatrice, 2007. "Does body weight affect wages?: Evidence from Europe," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 1-19, March.
    7. Han, Euna & Norton, Edward C. & Powell, Lisa M., 2011. "Direct and indirect effects of body weight on adult wages," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 381-392.
    8. Jaume Garcia Villar & Climent Quintana, 2005. "Body size, activity, employment and wages in Europe: A first approach," Economics Working Papers 897, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised May 2006.
    9. Asgeirsdottir, Tinna Laufey, 2011. "Do body weight and gender shape the work force? The case of Iceland," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 148-156, March.
    10. Euna Han & Edward C. Norton & Lisa M. Powell, 2009. "Direct and Indirect Effects of Teenage Body Weight on Adult Wages," NBER Working Papers 15027, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Eiji Yamamura, 2012. "Influence of body image in urbanized areas: differences in long-term changes in teenage body mass index between boys and girls in Japan," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 243-256, October.
    12. Dalton Conley & Rebecca Glauber, 2005. "Gender, Body Mass and Economic Status," NBER Working Papers 11343, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Marina-Selini Katsaiti & Mrittika Shamsuddin, 2016. "Weight discrimination in the German labour market," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(43), pages 4167-4182, September.
    14. Averett, Susan L. & Smith, Julie K., 2014. "Financial hardship and obesity," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 15(C), pages 201-212.
    15. Mukhopadhyay, Sankar, 2021. "Do employers discriminate against obese employees? Evidence from individuals who are simultaneously self-employed and working for an employer," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 42(C).
    16. Andrea Moro & Sebastian Tello‐Trillo & Tommaso Tempesti, 2019. "The Impact of Obesity on Wages: The Role of Personal Interactions and Job Selection," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 33(2), pages 125-146, June.
    17. Baum II, Charles L. & Ruhm, Christopher J., 2009. "Age, socioeconomic status and obesity growth," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 635-648, May.
    18. Philippe Mahler, 2007. "I'm not fat, just too short for my weight - Family Child Care and Obesity in Germany," SOI - Working Papers 0707, Socioeconomic Institute - University of Zurich.
    19. LIU Xing & SIERMINSKA Eva, 2014. "Evaluating the effect of beauty on labor market outcomes: A review of the literature," LISER Working Paper Series 2014-11, Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER).
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I3 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty
    • J0 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:10508. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.