Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/286739 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Citation: 
[Journal:] Empirical Economics [ISSN:] 1435-8921 [Volume:] 61 [Issue:] 4 [Publisher:] Springer [Place:] Berlin, Heidelberg [Year:] 2021 [Pages:] 2293-2333
Publisher: 
Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Abstract: 
This paper analyzes whether moderate weight reduction improves subjective health perception in obese individuals. Besides simple regression models, in a simultaneous equation framework we use randomized monetary weight loss incentives as instrument for weight change, to address possible endogeneity bias. In contrast to related earlier work that also employed instrumental variables estimation, identification does not rely on long-term, between-individuals weight variation, but on short-term, within-individual weight variation. Yet, our result does not suggest that the simple regressions suffer from much endogeneity bias, since instrumental variables estimation yields similar—though far noisily estimated and statistically insignificant—estimates. In qualitative terms, our results do not contradict previous findings pointing to weight loss in obese individuals resulting in improved subjective health. Our results suggest that a reduction of body weight by one BMI unit is associated with an increase in the probability of reporting self-rated health to be ‘satisfactory’ or better by 3 to 4 percentage points. This finding may encourage obese individuals in their weight loss attempts, since they are likely to be immediately rewarded for their efforts by subjective health improvements.
Subjects: 
Self-rated health
BMI
Obesity
Randomized experiment
Short-term effect
Instrumental variable
JEL: 
I12
C26
C93
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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