TY  - JOUR
AU  - Cawley,John
AU  - Price,Joshua A.
TI  - Outcomes in a Program that Offers Financial Rewards for Weight Loss
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14987
PY  - 2009
Y2  - May 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14987
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14987.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
John Cawley
3M24 MVR Hall
Department of Policy Analysis and Management
and Department of Economics
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY  14853
Tel: 607/255-0952
Fax: 607/255-4071
E-Mail: jhc38@cornell.edu

Joshua Price
Cornell University
385 Ives Hall East
Ithaca, NY 14853
Tel: 607-229-5590
E-Mail: jap224@cornell.edu
M1  - published as John Cawley, Joshua A. Price. "Outcomes in a Program that Offers Financial Rewards for Weight Loss," in Michael Grossman and Naci H. Mocan, editors, "Economic Aspects of Obesity" University of Chicago Press (2011)

M3  - presented at "Economic Aspects of Obesity", November 10-11, 2008
AB  - Obesity rates in the U.S. have doubled since 1980.  Given the medical, social, and financial costs of obesity, a large percentage of Americans are attempting to lose weight at any given time but the vast majority of weight loss attempts fail.  Researchers continue to search for safe and effective methods of weight loss, and this paper examines one promising method - offering financial rewards for weight loss. This paper studies data on 2,407 employees in 17 worksites who participated in a year-long worksite health promotion program that offered financial rewards for weight loss.  The intervention varied by employer, in some cases offering steady quarterly rewards for weight loss and in other cases requiring participants to post a bond that would be refunded at year's end conditional on achieving certain weight loss goals.  Still others received no financial incentives at all and serve as a control group.  We examine the basic patterns of enrollment, attrition, and weight loss in these three groups. Weight loss is modest.  After one year, it averages 1.4 pounds for those paid steady quarterly rewards and 3.6 pounds for those who posted a refundable bond, under the assumption that dropouts experienced no weight loss.  Year-end attrition is as high as 76.4%, far higher than that for interventions designed and implemented by researchers.
ER  -