The study, based on 15 years' worth of data from a large
U.S. survey, found that both girth and weight changes
were related to people's net worth -- their assets minus
their debts.
In general, people with a normal body mass index (BMI)
had the highest net worth, and heavy people who lost a
significant amount of weight tended to see their wealth
increase. Minor weight changes, on the other hand, showed
little financial effect.
The pattern was not neat, however. In particular, obese
black men had a greater net worth than slimmer black men,
and overall, there was no clear association between BMI
and wealth among African-American males.
In contrast, being thin helped white women's bottom lines
the most, according to findings published online by the
journal Economics and Human Biology. A white woman's net
worth peaked when her BMI was just above the threshold
for "normal," while that of white men and black women
was greatest when their BMI was at the higher end of normal.
White women also lost the most in terms of absolute dollars
as BMI increased.
Similarly, women and white men tended to gain wealth
after losing a large amount of weight. For example, a
typical white male who trimmed 10 points from his BMI
-- equivalent to a 6-foot-tall male going from 250 to
175 pounds -- had a wealth increase of $12,720. But
again, black men differed in that their net worth dipped
slightly with such a drastic weight change.
The reasons for the racial and gender discrepancy are
not clear -- nor is there an easy explanation for the
relationship between weight and wealth, according to study
author Jay Zagorsky, a researcher at Ohio State University's
Center for Human Resource Research in Columbus.
A person's body size does not seem to affect measures
of wealth like capital gains made from stocks, he stated,
and so it would appear that weight affects income specifically.
Other researchers, according to Zagorsky, have speculated
that heavy people may face discrimination in the workplace,
which could lower their incomes. Obesity might also raise
a person's spending, on food or treatments for obesity-related
health conditions, for example.
The study drew on data from the National Longitudinal
Survey of Youth, a large nationally representative survey
of Americans born between 1957 and 1964. Zagorsky based
his findings on data collected between 1985, when respondents
were at least 20 years old, and 2000.
The results indicate only an association between weight
and wealth, and not a definite cause-and-effect relationship.
However, Zagorsky pointed to some evidence that it's weight
that affects wealth, rather than the other way around.
A subanalysis of survey respondents whose wealth was
suddenly boosted with an inheritance found that these
individuals had no significant changes in BMI in the following
years.
SOURCE: Economics and Human Biology, online July 2005.
