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| Type | Working Paper |
| Scope | Discipline-based scholarship |
| Title | Imitative Obesity and Relative Utility |
| Organization Unit | |
| Authors |
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| Language |
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| Institution | University of Zurich |
| Series Name | Working paper series / Institute for Empirical Research in Economics |
| Number | No. 392 |
| ISSN | 1424-0459 |
| Date | 2008 |
| Abstract Text | If human beings care about their relative weight, a form of imitative obesity can emerge (in which people subconsciously keep up with the weight of the Joneses). Using Eurobarometer data on 29 countries, this paper provides cross-sectional evidence that overweight perceptions and dieting are influenced by a person’s relative BMI, and longitudinal evidence from the German Socioeconomic Panel that well-being is influenced by relative BMI. Highly educated people see themselves as fatter -- at any given actual weight -- than those with low education. These results should be treated cautiously, and fixed-effects estimates are not always welldetermined, but there are grounds to take seriously the possibility of socially contagious obesity. |
| Official URL | http://www.econ.uzh.ch/wp.html |
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