Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/295709 
Year of Publication: 
2023
Series/Report no.: 
CReAM Discussion Paper Series No. 12/23
Publisher: 
Centre for Research & Analysis of Migration (CReAM), Department of Economics, University College London, London
Abstract: 
This paper investigates the roots of potential labour-market discrimination underlying the negative correlation between obesity and hourly wages. Using a panel dataset of white individuals drawn from the U.S. 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97), we test whether residual wage gaps could be attributed to prejudice (taste-based discrimination) and/or statistical discrimination. To this end, we examine how these two types of discrimination hinge on a wide range of obese individuals' specific job and occupational characteristics (drawn from the O*Net Online database). In particular, our analysis sheds light on whether discrimination originates from clients' attitudes, fellow workers or employers. Our findings are consistent with taste-based discrimination against obese females, especially as they become older, in jobs requiring frequent communication with either clients or employers. However, the evidence on this issue is weaker for males. We conjecture that these differences may originate from both an over-representation of males among employers and different image concerns against people of the same gender.
Subjects: 
Obesity
Wages
Discrimination
Job Characteristics
NLSY97
O*Net Online
JEL: 
J71
J15
J31
J24
I10
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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