Abstract
Discrimination and prejudice against overweight people is common in Western societies. In this article we aim to understand whether these attitudes reverberate into the school setting, by investigating whether teachers grade overweight students more severely than comparable normal weight students. By relying on the Attribution-Value Model of Prejudice (AVMP) and previous studies, we test a series of hypotheses using data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS SC3) on a sample of students enrolled in the 7th grade (lower secondary education). We used hierarchical ordered logit regression to assess whether overweight and obese students receive systematically lower grades by their teachers in German and mathematics, adjusting for subject-specific competences measured with a standardized test, and a rich set of socio-demographic and socio-psychological students’ characteristics (e.g. the “big five”). Results suggested that overweight and obese students were more severely graded in both subjects. The penalty for overweight students, and especially for obese students, was slightly larger in German and in the lowest part of the grade distribution. There was also indication of heterogeneous penalties by gender, with overweight male students being especially penalized in math. Possible ways to help teachers in assigning grades in a fairer way are discussed at the end.
Highlights
Discrimination against overweight people in the labor market and in social life is well documented and increased over time [1, 2]
The share of students attending the Gymnasium is much lower among overweight (44%) and obese (36%) students compared to normal weight students (63%)
From previous studies we knew that overweight students get, on average, lower grades than their peers in school [30, 31] but it was not clear if the differences in grades stem from discrimination or from actual differences in competences
Summary
Discrimination against overweight people in the labor market and in social life is well documented and increased over time [1, 2]. Overweight people are less likely to be hired [3] and are at risk to receive a lower starting salary in comparison to normal weight people [4]. Overweight people are more often bullied [5] and receive less friendship requests in social networks on the internet [6]. In this article we aim to understand whether obese and overweight people constitute stigmatized and penalized social categories in a specific context that has attracted comparatively less attention, namely the school.
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