Fat Lowers Wages

As a healthy, fit, incredibly handsome, white male I'm still puzzled at the fact that I'm flat-broke.
 
TragicMonkey said:
It costs money to join a gym, have gastric bypass surgery, or liposuction. Therefore the people already making lots of money will be able to afford it where others can't.
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Although the home do-it-yourself gastric bypass and liposuction kits you can get these days are surprisingly affordable!
 
Haven't read the linked article, but does it say whether the graph of the line between weight and wages is straight?

In other words, do morbidly obese people skew the results by being unemployable? I somehow can't believe that being 175 pounds instead of 150 pounds will significantly affect a man's salary, whereas being 475 pounds will, if for no other reason than he'll tend to take a lot more sick days off work. At some point, I would think increased weight would suddenly and dramatically start causing comparative salary discrepancies.
 
BPSCG said:
Haven't read the linked article, but does it say whether the graph of the line between weight and wages is straight?

In other words, do morbidly obese people skew the results by being unemployable? I somehow can't believe that being 175 pounds instead of 150 pounds will significantly affect a man's salary, whereas being 475 pounds will, if for no other reason than he'll tend to take a lot more sick days off work. At some point, I would think increased weight would suddenly and dramatically start causing comparative salary discrepancies.
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I just linked to a blog post about the article. The blog in turn links to the actual study, which is a big pdf, and I only skimmed that. My guess would be that it's not straight (nothing like this ever is totally linear). And it's NOT weight, but body composition. According to the study, it matters whether that extra 25 pounds is fat or muscle. I think they are contending that if the extra 25 pounds is muscle, wages go up, and if it's fat, wages go down. This is not a BMI study, but a body composition study.
 
Correlational study, anyone?

This appears to be the main finding, after all individual effects were factored out:

Looking at the coefficients in Panel B of Table 3A, a one kilogram increase in the BF reduces wages by about 1 percent for Hispanic males and Hispanic females, and about 0.9-1.0 percent for white males and white females. The effects of BF on the wages of black males and females are smaller and only significant for females. The wages of black females go
down by about 0.6 percent in response to a one kilogram increase in body fat.

When the FFM is raised by one kilogram, the wages increase by about 0.7 percent for white males and Hispanic males and about 1.3 percent for white and Hispanic females. Again, the effects on black males and females are smaller and both coefficients are insignificant. These results indicate that, while an increase in body size that is due to an increase in BF will hurt wages, FFM is actually beneficial. Interestingly, the sizes of the effects are very similar between whites and Hispanics for both males and females.
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My Baseless Causal Theory:
Getting paid a high wage involves a lot of time pressure and constant stress. As a result, rich people cannot sleep, barely eat, and are miserable, unhealthy people, albiet thin.
It is much better to be relatively poor, so you can be fat and happy from living the good life! :D
 
Smackety said:
This appears to be the main finding, after all individual effects were factored out:



My Baseless Causal Theory:
Getting paid a high wage involves a lot of time pressure and constant stress. As a result, rich people cannot sleep, barely eat, and are miserable, unhealthy people, albiet thin.
It is much better to be relatively poor, so you can be fat and happy from living the good life! :D
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Thank you! And welcome to the forum. :D

IOW, more FFM (fat-free mass = muscle) increases wages, while more fat decreases wages. This is why a simple BMI study would not pick it up. BMI does not distinguish between fat and muscle (except that at really high weights, it's almost surely fat).
 
As if we ugly people needed more evidence that beautiful people get all the breaks.
 
Statistically, "fat" people are discriminated against as much as African-Americans, as far as average wages, etc. go. I also wondered if it wasn't related to "ugly people" earn less, perhaps a more general "physically unattractive people earn less", whether ugly or fat or both.

It's also been pointed out "fat" is still acceptible for discrimination, as far as mocking goes. Witness Jurassic Park, where the bad guy is a fatso. This is not coincidental -- Spielberg goes out of his way to emphasize he eats a lot, with wrappers everywhere, and the unconscionable line, "I'm gonna go get something salty from the machine, I'm in the mood for something salty" (to presumably counter the sweets he just guzzled.)
 
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