TY - JOUR AU - Cawley, John AU - Moran, John R AU - Simon, Kosali I TI - The Impact of Income on the Weight of Elderly Americans JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 14104 PY - 2008 Y2 - June 2008 DO - 10.3386/w14104 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14104 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14104.pdf N1 - Author contact info: John Cawley 2312 MVR Hall Department of Policy Analysis and Management and Department of Economics Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 Tel: 607-255-0952 E-Mail: JHC38@cornell.edu John R. Moran 604 Ford Building Department of Health Policy and Administration Pennsylvania State University University Park PA 16802 Tel: 315/443-9058 Fax: 315/443-1081 E-Mail: jrm12@psu.edu Kosali I. Simon O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs Indiana University Rm 357 1315 East Tenth Street Bloomington, IN 47405-1701 Tel: (812) 856-3850 E-Mail: simonkos@indiana.edu AB - This paper tests whether income affects the body weight and clinical weight classification of elderly Americans using a natural experiment that led otherwise identical retirees to receive significantly different Social Security payments based on their year of birth. We exploit this natural experiment by estimating models of instrumental variables using data from the National Health Interview Surveys. The model estimates rule out even moderate effects of income on weight and on the probability of being underweight or obese, especially for men. ER -