Abstract

Background: Overweight and obesity have been linked with several objective and subjective measures of health. However, results are mixed and this relationship seems to vary across populations, genders and age categories. This paper investigates the relationship between categories of the Body Mass Index (underweight, normal weight, overweight, obesity and severe obesity) and satisfaction with health.

Highlights

  • According to the World Health Organization (WHO 2016), worldwide the prevalence of obesity has more than doubled since 1980 and in 2014 600 million people were obese

  • Where SWHit was the satisfaction with health score of respondent i at time t; Xit was a vector of K time-varying BMI dummies; Zit and Wi represented, respectively, a vector of Q time-varying and R time-constant characteristics, that we considered as control variables

  • We could see that the sign of the coefficients were consistent and in line with the literature, as expected, there appeared to be a shrink in the size of estimates moving from the OLS to random effect (RE) and from RE to the fixed effect (FE) specifications

Read more

Summary

Introduction

According to the World Health Organization (WHO 2016), worldwide the prevalence of obesity has more than doubled since 1980 and in 2014 600 million people were obese. Childhood obesity is increasing at an even higher rate than adult obesity, what would probably lead to a further increase in the prevalence of obesity, given that obese children are more likely to become obese adults (Singh et al 2008; Reilly and Kelly 2011). In Switzerland obesity rates are low compare to most OECD countries, but they have increased significantly in the last twenty years: in 1992, 31.3% of the Swiss population was overweight or obese, and this increased to 41,2 % in 2012 (Schneider and Venetz 2014). According to the most recent estimates of the Swiss Survey on Health, in 2012 41% of the Swiss population aged over 15 years appear to be overweight or obese (Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) 2014). There is robust evidence suggesting that obesity is an important risk factors for a set of health problems and diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, respiratory problems, musculoskeletal diseases and some forms of cancer

Lucchini (*) Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Milan-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
Body Mass Index and Satisfaction with Health in Contemporary Switzerland
Empirical Results
Conclusion

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call

Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.