Overweight Workers Receive Smaller Wages
Friday, May 13th, 2005 at 12:02 pm
An interesting article I found relating to one of yesterday's posts:
Workers who are obese might be receiving lower wages than other employees as companies try to compensate for higher health-related spending associated with overweight workers, according to a… Stanford University study recently published as a working paper on the Web site of the Massachusetts-based National Bureau of Economic Research, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The study used data from a Bureau of Labor Statistics survey, which contained detailed information about employees' height, weight and health, as well as their jobs, wages and education. Researchers from 1989 to 1998 compared hourly wages of obese and nonobese workers, factoring in experience and job type. While other research has shown obese workers receive lower wages than nonobese people, the new study shows the phenomenon exists only in companies offering workers health insurance, the Chronicle reports. Severely overweight workers with health care coverage in 1989 were paid an adjusted average of $1.20 less per hour than workers of normal weight, according to the study. The wage difference increased incrementally to $2.58 in 1998, which suggests the gap widened as workers aged, the researchers said.
Source/Read more at: Medical News Today
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