http://ftp.iza.org/dp2717.pdf
Avner Offer's work is highly relevant to a lot of the discussion's we've had lately about economic prosperity, obesity, well-being etc., A link to his website is below. Above is a recent IZA working paper that examines rising psych-distress and subjective body dissatisfaction in Britain. I also link below to a recent RAND commentary on the increase in severe overweight in the US.
At the moment, i am also looking at subjective perceptions of body-weight, life satisfaction, alcohol consumption etc.,
http://www.history.ox.ac.uk/staff/postholder/offer_a.htm
http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9043-1/
1 comment:
A really interesting article. The Challenge of Affluence also seems well worth a read.
I'm sure there is nothing to say that both self-control and status can be linked to well-being and trends in slimness and overweight. The idea that the marginal utility of slimness increases when those around us are gaining weight in a society which confers status to the slim is quite nice and could explain socio-economic trends in weight gain as partially due to goals of class distinction (restraint expresses affluence). This is probably not incompatible with rising levels of disorders of self-control and as impulsivity can be expressed in different ways it may be that people distribute their self-control resources differently depending on their goals.
Specifically, if there are diminishing returns in status investment -in terms of effortful weight loss- the authors suggest the person will gladly follow trends in weight gain. This makes some sense (though trends in obesity are somewhat inverse to status)but I think the authors suggest a class aspirational model whereby people are mainly driven to gain relative income and ranked position. What may be more accurate is that people seek to improve their status within their social group which is likely to be largely of the same socio-economic status. If the value of slimness is less in lower socio-economic groups there will be diminishing returns in investing in it, people may follow trends in weight gain, not because they can no longer gain status but because weight loss is not an effective means to do so.
Despite what the authors may believe it is quite likely that for many self-control becomes worse with affluence. The time and energy (in terms of exercise, walking to shops, cooking etc) costs of food preparation have decreased substantially with increased availability of various foods. These benefits would be welfare enhancing if it were not for self-control problems which are given greater expression than previously due to the lack of time delay on food availability. Some may invest their self-control resources in weight gain prevention but this is likely to be because of the greater value this confers to different socio-economic groups and the different levels of self-control support resources across groups.
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