TY  - JOUR
AU  - Blanchflower,David G.
AU  - Oswald,Andrew J.
AU  - Landeghem,Bert Van
TI  - Imitative Obesity and Relative Utility
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14337
PY  - 2008
Y2  - September 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14337
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14337.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
David G. Blanchflower
Bruce V. Rauner Professor of Economics
6106 Rockefeller Hall
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH  03755-3514
Tel: 603/646-2536
Fax: 603/646-2122
E-Mail: David.G.Blanchflower@Dartmouth.EDU

Andrew Oswald
Department of Economics
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL
England
Tel: 44-01203-5235
Fax: 44-01203-5230
E-Mail: a.j.oswald@warwick.ac.uk

bert van Landeghem
LICOS Centre for Institutions
  and Economic Performance
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Belgium
E-Mail: Bert.VanLandeghem@econ.kuleuven.be
AB  - If human beings care about their relative weight, a form of imitative obesity can emerge (in which people subconsciously keep up with the weight of the Joneses).  Using Eurobarometer data on 29 countries, this paper provides cross-sectional evidence that overweight perceptions and dieting are influenced by a person's relative BMI, and longitudinal evidence from the German Socioeconomic Panel that well-being is influenced by relative BMI.  Highly educated people see themselves as fatter -- at any given actual weight -- than those with low education.  These results should be treated cautiously, and fixed-effects estimates are not always well-determined, but there are grounds to take seriously the possibility of socially contagious obesity.
ER  -