TY  - JOUR
AU  - Chou,Shin-Yi
AU  - Grossman,Michael
AU  - Saffer,Henry
TI  - An Economic Analysis of Adult Obesity: Results from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 9247
PY  - 2002
Y2  - October 2002
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9247
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9247.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Shin-Yi Chou
Department of Economics
College of Business and Economics
Lehigh University
621 Taylor Street
Bethlehem, PA  18015-3117
Tel:  610/758-3444
Fax: NA
E-Mail: syc2@lehigh.edu

Michael Grossman
Ph.D. Program in Economics
City University of New York Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue, 5th Floor
New York, NY  10016-4309
Tel: 212/817-7959
Fax: 212/817-1597
E-Mail: mgrossman@gc.cuny.edu

Henry Saffer
NBER
365 Fifth Avenue, 5th Floor
New York, NY  10016-4309
Tel: 212/817-7956
Fax: 212/817-1597
E-Mail: hsaffer@gc.cuny.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2003-02-01
AB  - Since the late 1970s, the number of obese adults in the United States has grown by over 50 percent. This paper examines the factors that may be responsible for this rapidly increasing prevalence rate. To study the determinants of adult obesity and related outcomes, we employ micro-level data from the 1984-1999 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. These repeated cross sections are augmented with state level measures pertaining to the per capita number of fast- food restaurants, the per capita number of full-service restaurants, the price of a meal in each type of restaurant, the price of food consumed at home, the price of cigarettes, clean indoor air laws, and hours of work per week and hourly wage rates by age, gender, race, years of formal schooling completed, and marital status. Our main results are that these variables have the expected effects on obesity and explain a substantial amount of its trend. These findings control for individual-level measures of household income, years of formal schooling completed, and marital status.
ER  -