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

Abstract

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The Impact of Body Weight on Occupational Mobility and Career Development

“…Recent work by Lindeboom et al. () and Caliendo and Lee () and experimental work by Reichert () has found that weight or weight loss among men does not affect the probability of gaining employment. Our results are consistent with this overall conclusion, but yield the additional insight that body weight does affect the particular kind of work an individual is likely to attain conditional on wage offers.…”

The Effect of Weight on Labor Market Outcomes: An Application of Genetic Instrumental Variables

“…A recent study of the impact of weight on employment (Reichert, 2015) used a novel identification strategy: random assignment to a weight loss intervention that offered monetary rewards for weight loss, as opposed to assignment to a control group. The IV estimates suggest that a 1 percentage point reduction in BMI raises the probability of employment for women by 2.1 percentage points (2.8%) but has no impact on the employment probability of men.…”

The Long-Run Effects of Sports Club Vouchers for Primary School Children

“…Studies show that adults can be incentivized to go to the gym more often, but the effects are short-lived and people seem to find it difficult to change their habits permanently (DellaVigna and Malmendier, 2006;Royer et al, 2015;Carrera et al, 2018Carrera et al, , 2020. Exceptions are Reichert (2015) and Augurzky et al (2018) who find long(er)lasting effects on weight loss and health behavior in a randomized controlled trial among obese health plan enrollees in Germany. In one of the few studies that focuses on children, Angelucci et al (2020) study peer effects in health behaviors in a field experiment among K-8 school children in Chicago.…”