The Economics of Obesity John Cawley Cornell University and National Bureau of Economic Research

Research on Economics of Obesity Overviews of the economics of obesity Measurement of Obesity: –BMI overstates obesity in African Americans –Timing of epidemic of obesity varies by measure used to track it –Encouraging social science datasets to collect more accurate measures of fatness Causes of Obesity: –Income: negligible effect on weight of the elderly –Food advertising (in progress)

Research on Economics of Obesity Consequences of Obesity –Labor market outcomes: wages, employment, welfare to work, absenteeism, disability (generally worse for women than men) –Medical costs –Risky behaviors: dating, sexual activity, smoking initiation among teens –Skill attainment of young children (2-3 yrs) Prevention and Treatment –Physical education classes (no effect on weight) –Financial rewards for weight loss (modest effects) –School-based interventions (mixed) –Nutrition labels (effective for white females) –Demand for anti-obesity drugs –Deceptive advertising of over-the-counter weight loss products –Predicting complications after bariatric surgery –What predicts state legislative action on childhood obesity –Voters’ willingness to pay for reductions in childhood obesity

How Informed by Other Fields Causes: –Genetics: relative contributions of genes, environment and interactions –Sociology: peer effects Consequences: –Medicine: obesity-related comorbidities (suggest logical labor market consequences) –Sociology: assortative mating Treatment: –Psychology: departures from perfect rationality to explain failed weight loss attempts, offer guidance on interventions –Medicine: set points in weight, metabolism response to dieting

What Other Obesity Researchers Can Use From Economics Offers widely-accepted theoretical framework for human behavior (constrained maximization) –Economics asks different questions, generates different predictions – focuses on role of incentives and tradeoffs Offers clearly-defined rationales for policy intervention –Fix market failures Offers useful methods for estimating causal effects (e.g. exploiting natural experiments) –Determining causes and consequences of obesity –Determining what interventions or policies work –Which policies work best: cost-effectiveness analysis

What I’d Like to Learn From You I don’t even know the extent of what I don’t know What I know I don’t know: –Can individual alleles/genes be exploited as natural experiments? –What are the true causal effects of obesity on specific aspects of health (as opposed to correlations that could be due to unobserved factors)? –Contribution of brain chemistry to these behaviors –More on response of metabolism, set points in weight –More on psychology of delayed gratification / weight loss attempts –What are you learning from ongoing interventions? –What can we learn from research on other risky behaviors?