Over-Nutrition and Changing Health Status in HighIncome Countries - Revised 02/28/08

Malnutrition and food deprivation, which are concentrated in poor countries, have been along-term concern of economists, but as per capita income in developed countries has grown in the20th century, a new problem of over-nutrition leading to obesity has occurred. This paper developsmodels of calorie demand and health supply, as reflected in aggregate mortality statistics, and teststhem against data for high income countries. The models are fitted to newly developed internationalaggregate data for 18 high income countries over 1971-2001. Some findings are that a higher priceof food, of other purchased consumer goods and of wages reduces the macro demand for caloriesand supply of mortality associated with obesity, but other forms of mortality are unaffected by theseprices. In the aggregate, caloric intake is a normal good, contributing to energy imbalance.However, higher incomes do reduce macro level mortality risk. Higher labor force participationrates, associated with working women, increase the macro demand for calories and the supply ofobesity-related mortality.[...]