Could A Diet Lead To A Heavier Paycheck?

Did you know that a few extra pounds around the waistline may lead to a lighter paycheck?

A recent paper by Judge and Cable has found a relationship between gender, earnings and obesity. According to the authors, "employers have internalized the notion that employees' weight matters." Some studies have reported that 60% of overweight women and 40% of overweight men indicate that they have been victims of discrimination.

Theoretically, any weight-based discrimination in hiring, training, promotions, etc., shows itself in terms of lower earnings. To test this notion, Judge and Cable measured the weight of a sample of 12,686 Americans fifteen times over a 25-year time span.

One of the really interesting - and novel - features of this study is that individuals can be studied over time. Unlike other studies that have looked at the relationship between weight and earnings at a given point in time, this study can also look at how weight changes from year to year influence earnings.

The Judge-Cable model controls for gender, height, age, race, childhood socioeconomic status, educational attainment, smoking and excessive drinking behavior, marital status, presence of children, spouse's earnings, maternity leave, hours worked, job tenure, public or private sector job, job complexity, perceived health problems, and self-esteem.

Not surprisingly, the control variables significantly predicted earnings in the expected direction (e.g., higher educational attainment correlates with higher earnings, less job tenure correlates with lower earnings, etc.). And, as expected, there is a positive relationship between time and earnings, meaning that in real terms, earnings increased over time.

Interestingly, after controlling for all of the above-mentioned factors, the study found a significant relationship between weight and earnings. But it appears as though there's a gender double-standard: the overall weight-earnings relationship was generally positive for men and negative for women.

But the really interesting thing is what Judge and Cable learned about changes in a person's weight and his or her earnings:

For men, increases in weight have positive linear effects of pay but at diminished returns at above-average levels of weight. For women, increases in weight have negative linear effects on pay, but the negative effects are stronger at below-average than at above-average levels.

Perhaps the most startling finding of this investigation is that men and women experience opposite incentives regarding weight in the very thin to average weight range. Whereas women are punished for any weight gain, very thin women receive the most severe punishment for their first few pounds of weight gain... Very thin men, conversely, are punished relative to their average weight peers, and men are rewarded for gaining weight until the point of obesity.

Simply put, as men gain weight their earnings tend to increase, and when they lose weight, their earnings tend to decrease. The opposite is true for women; women's earnings decrease when they gain weight, and when they lose weight, their earnings tend to increase. But the magnitude of earnings changes for men and women are quite different, as shown below:

So, what do you think? Are we going to have to start examining our compensation for internal equity with respect to gender and weight? In our litigious society, you know sooner or later someone is going to make that claim...

Image By Aspen04 (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Stephanie R. Thomas is an economic and statistical consultant specializing in EEO issues and employment litigation risk management. For more than a decade, she's been working with businesses and government agencies providing expert analysis. Stephanie has published several articles on examining compensation systems with respect to internal equity, and has appeared on NPR to discuss the gender wage gap. She is the host of The Proactive Employer, and is the founder of Thomas Econometrics.

Thanks to CompensationCafe