Fat chance! Obesity and the transition from unemployment to employment

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E S ABSTRACTFat Chance! Obesity and the Transition from Unemployment to Employment * This paper focuses on estimating the magnitude of any potential weight discrimination by examining whether obese job applicants in Germany get treated or behave differently from non-obese applicants. Based on two waves of rich survey data from the IZA Evaluation dataset, which includes measures that control for education, demographic characteristics, labor market history, psychological factors and health, we estimate differences in job search behavior and labor market outcomes between obese/overweight and healthy weight individuals. Unlike other observational studies which are generally based on obese and nonobese individuals who might already be at different points in the job ladder (e.g., household surveys), in our data, individuals are newly unemployed and all start from the same point. The only subgroup we find in our data experiencing any possible form of labor market discrimination is obese women. Despite making more job applications and engaging more in job training programs, we find some indications that they experienced worse (or at best similar) employment outcomes than healthy weight women. Obese women who found a job also had significantly lower wages than healthy weight women. JEL Classification:I10, I12, J23, J70

Home-ownership, unemployed’s job search behavior and post-unemployment outcomes

“…Using the matching estimator as a tool to perform decompositions instead of estimating average treatment effects is similar in spirit to the papers by Frölich (2007), Nopo (2008) or Caliendo and Lee (2013). Unlike the standard application of matching in the treatment evaluation literature, it is not strictly necessary that the conditional independence assumption holds in our case.…”

Obesity and the labor market: A fresh look at the weight penalty

“…For instance, heavy women tend to be more prone to adverse labor market outcomes than overweight men (Mocan and Tekin, 2011). There is also evidence that they have less success in their transition back to employment, despite putting in more effort and having lower reservation wages (Caliendo and Lee, 2013).…”

Obesity, Weight Loss, and Employment Prospects – Evidence from a Randomized Trial

“…Regarding the probability to be in employment, Morris (2007) reports a statistically significant negative effect, which is smaller for men. Caliendo and Lee (2011) report a significant effect only for women. Both analyses are based on data from continental European countries.…”

“…This differential treatment in hiring was more pronounced for women. See also Klesges et al (1990). and Williams, 1990;Averett and Korenman, 1996;Pagán and Dávila, 1997;Cawley, 2004;Baum and Ford, 2004;Morris, 2006;Bhattacharya and Bundorf, 2009;Han et al, 2009;Cawley et al, 2009;Lundborg et al, 2010), there also exists an extensive literature on the effect of obesity on employment (e.g., Morris, 2007;Norton and Han, 2008;Han et al, 2009;Cawley et al, 2009;Lindeboom et al, 2010;Caliendo and Lee, 2011).…”

“…Finally, Morris (2007) uses the prevalence of obesity in the area of residence which seems to be the most convincing approach. However, despite extensively controlling for area characteristics, he is not able to rule out endogenous regional selection due to the cross-sectional nature of the used data (see also Caliendo and Lee, 2011).…”