Exploiting the Indonesian Family Life Survey, this paper studies the transition of socioeconomic related disparity of excess weight, including overweight and obesity, from 1993 to 2014. First, we show that the proportions of overweight and obese people in Indonesia increased rapidly during the...

Starting in 2009, the German state of Saxony distributed sports club membership vouchers among all 33,000 third graders in the state. The policy's objective was to encourage them to develop a long-term habit of exercising. In 2018, we carried out a large register-based survey among several...

Starting in 2009, the German state of Saxony distributed sports club membership vouchers among all 33,000 third graders in the state. The policy's objective was to encourage them to develop a long-term habit of exercising. In 2018, we carried out a large register-based survey among several...

We used unconditional quantile regression to reveal heterogeneity in the social gradient at different levels of Body Mass Index (BMI) distribution by educational level, employment situation and neighborhood income for 1986 and 2016 in Barcelona. The contribution of these factors to changes in...

The economic and social cost of obesity in America is at an all-time high and continues to rise. We estimate its cost to be roughly 6.76 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2018 compared to 5.57 percent in 2014, or in dollar terms, $1.389 trillion in 2018 compared to $0.976 trillion in...

Two of the most important health risk factors for children and young adults are obesity and alcohol use. These risk factors are known to affect health and wellbeing, but may also have an impact on educational outcomes. The objective of this study was to assess a potential causal relationship...

We complement the empirical evidence on the sustainability of weight loss achieved through cash rewards and, for the first time, rigorously examine the potential of cash rewards to prevent weight cycling. In a three period randomized controlled trial, about 700 obese persons were first assigned...

This paper examines weight loss and the formation of healthy habits through cash rewards in the context of a multi-phase randomized controlled trial involving 700 obese individuals. We find effects of monetary incentives for weight loss of up to EUR 300 on body weight during all experimental...

This paper examines weight loss and the formation of healthy habits through cash rewards in the context of a multi-phase randomized controlled trial involving 700 obese individuals. We find effects of monetary incentives for weight loss of up to EUR 300 on body weight during all experimental...

We examine the relationship between BMI and mental health for young adults and elderly individuals using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and the Health & Retirement Study. While OLS estimates show that BMI is significantly associated with worse mental health in...