Exploring Gender Specific Wage Differentials Between Obese and Non-Obese Adults: Evidence from the NLSY

In this paper we investigate obese/non-obese wage differentials using microdata for white individuals from the 2000 wave of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Using longitudinal information we estimated transition probability indices and synthetic mobility measures for moving in-and-out of the obese group. The results clearly show that obesity is a rather permanent characteristic. Then, we apply typical Oaxaca-Blinder wage decompositions to identify the proportion of the observed gender-specific wage differential between obese and non-obese. Based on numerous specifications and alternative sub-samples the results provide strong evidence for the existence of wage differentials in favor of non-obese individuals, which can be mostly explained by differences in early human capital investments and especially schooling investments.