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Format:
Print
Author:
DeSisto, Thomas Patrick
Dept./Program:
Community Development and Applied Economics
Year:
2011
Degree:
MS
Abstract:
Obesity is a serious public health issue in the United States. One third of American adults are obese, and 68.0 percent are either overweight or obese. This is a significant increase from the early 1960s, when only 13.4 percentof Americans were obese. Currently, there is no indication that this trend toward greater levels of obesity among the population will be reversed. Being overweight or obese has been associated with decreases in life expectancy due to a variety of medical conditions, ranging from diabetes to heart disease. Developing a better understanding of behaviors related to unhealthy weight may help reverse this trend and improve health outcomes.
This study begins with a comprehensive review of the literature. This literature review starts by framing the issue of unhealthy body weight and explains the financial costs and impacts on health. Three frameworks for understanding unhealthy body weight are presented and examined: genetic, behavioral, and environmental. Following this examination, human capital theory, and specifically Grossman's model of the demand for health capital is detailed, leading to the introduction of a model of the demand for a healthy body weight.
The second chapter is a conceptualization of unhealthy body weight in a health production framework. The chapter presents an exploratory study that was conducted by the authors. A series of 16 focus groups on unhealthy weight behaviors were conducted and the data analyzed using content analysis with multiple coders. The results from this exploratory study revealed that consumers strive to maximize their personal satisfaction with respect to a healthy weight, within the constraints of time and cost. Based on these findings, a model of the demand for a healthy weight is presented and discussed.
In the third chapter, the health production model is tested using empirical data from a survey conducted by the authors. The survey of consumers from one geographic region was conducted from a simple random sample, and using computer assisted telephone interviewing. The model was tested using binary logistic regression. The findings from the test of the model are presented and discussed. At the end of the chapter, several conclusions are shared, along with a discussion of the limitations of the model and the data, and suggestions for future research.
Overall, this study indicates that household production economics can be used to help understand unhealthy body weight behavior and shows that human body weight may be modeled using a body weight production function.