全球智库信息集成服务系统(G2TT): The Impact of Minimum Wage Rates on Body Weight in the United States

G2TT

来源类型	Working Paper
规范类型	报告
DOI	10.3386/w15485
来源ID	Working Paper 15485
	The Impact of Minimum Wage Rates on Body Weight in the United States
	David O. Meltzer; Zhuo Chen
发表日期	2009-11-05
出版年	2009
语种	英语
摘要	Growing consumption of increasingly less expensive food, and especially "fast food", has been cited as a potential cause of increasing rate of obesity in the United States over the past several decades. Because the real minimum wage in the United States has declined by as much as half over 1968-2007 and because minimum wage labor is a major contributor to the cost of food away from home we hypothesized that changes in the minimum wage would be associated with changes in bodyweight over this period. To examine this, we use data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System from 1984-2006 to test whether variation in the real minimum wage was associated with changes in body mass index (BMI). We also examine whether this association varied by gender, education and income, and used quantile regression to test whether the association varied over the BMI distribution. We also estimate the fraction of the increase in BMI since 1970 attributable to minimum wage declines. We find that a $1 decrease in the real minimum wage was associated with a 0.06 increase in BMI. This relationship was significant across gender and income groups and largest among the highest percentiles of the BMI distribution. Real minimum wage decreases can explain 10% of the change in BMI since 1970. We conclude that the declining real minimum wage rates has contributed to the increasing rate of overweight and obesity in the United States. Studies to clarify the mechanism by which minimum wages may affect obesity might help determine appropriate policy responses.
主题	Health, Education, and Welfare ; Health ; Education ; Labor Economics ; Labor Compensation
URL	https://www.nber.org/papers/w15485
来源智库	National Bureau of Economic Research (United States)
引用统计
资源类型	智库出版物
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/573161
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	David O. Meltzer,Zhuo Chen. The Impact of Minimum Wage Rates on Body Weight in the United States. 2009.

条目包含的文件
文件名称/大小	资源类型	版本类型	开放类型	使用许可
w15485.pdf（199KB）	智库出版物		限制开放	CC BY-NC-SA	浏览