May 2015

IZA DP No. 9050: Obesity and Economic Performance of Young Workers in Italy

published as 'Obesity and the economic performance of young people in Italy' in: G. Coppola and N. O'Higgins (eds): Youth and the Crisis: Unemployment, Education and Health in Europe, Routledge, 2016, Chapter 8

In this paper we explore recent ISFOL-PLUS 2006-2008-2010 data available for Italy about height and weight of young workers with the purpose of analysing the relationship between measures of obesity and measures of economic performance. Among the latter, we introduce job satisfaction, both overall and for nine specific aspects, which has not been previously considered in the literature on the effects of obesity. Interestingly enough, we find that BMI does not discriminate young workers with respect to their job earnings, but it does affect negatively young workers' job satisfaction with important gender effects.