The media are full of stories about how Americans are putting on weight and public health officials keep telling them to exercise more and slim down. But most Americans seem content to stay on the couch.
Being overweight or obese is very clearly tied to economics.
The increase in the number of American women who work may also help explain the trend toward flab. Yesteryear’s housework, while only moderately strenuous, was more physically demanding than sitting at a desk today.
But even if people were all thinner because they picked cotton or cut wheat by hand, they would also have shorter and less satisfying lives.
Source: Virginia Postrel (Reason magazine), Economic Scene: Americans’ Waistlines Have Become the Victims of Economic Progress, New York Times, March 22, 2001, and Tomas J.Philipson and Richard A. Posner The Long- Run Growth in Obesity as a Function of Technological Change, NBER Working Paper No. W7423, November 1999, National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Mass. 02138, (617) 868-3900.
For text http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/22/business/22SCEN.html?searchpv=nytToday
For NBER abstract http://www.nber.org/papers/w7423
For more on Pharmaceutical Economics http://www.ncpa.org/pi/health/hedex7l.html
