Are obese people choosing more sedentary jobs?

by Cluley, Ashley B.

Throughout the developed world there are a growing number of people becoming obese. Advancing technology continues to make our jobs less physically demanding. I show that a person with a higher body mass index (BMI) does not choose a more sedentary job position. Job strenuousness is found by using principal component analysis. The three instrumental variables used for two-stage least squares are youth health, the number of restaurants per state per thousand residents, and an indicator variable if a person plays computer games at home. I reviewed 2SLS, JN2SLS and ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions and based on the testing results, I choose to use the efficient, consistent, and unbiased estimates of OLS. Taking into account the bias on BMI, the OLS results show the coefficient on BMI is not statistically significantly different from zero.