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Author: Wada, Roy
Resulting in 4 citations.
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Powell, Lisa M. Wada, Roy Krauss, Ramona C. Wang, Youfa |
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Ethnic Disparities in Adolescent Body Mass Index in the United States: The Role of Parental Socioeconomic Status and Economic Contextual Factors Social Science and Medicine 75,3 (August 2012): 469-476. Also: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027795361200278X Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: Elsevier Keyword(s): Body Mass Index (BMI); Ethnic Differences; Household Income; Neighborhood Effects; Parental Influences; Racial Differences; Socioeconomic Background; Socioeconomic Status (SES); Weight This paper examined the importance of household and economic contextual factors as determinants of ethnic disparities in adolescent body mass index (BMI). Individual-level data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 for the years 1997 through 2000 were combined with economic contextual data on food prices, outlet density and median household income. The Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method was used to examine the factors that could help explain ethnic disparities in BMI. Ethnic differences in household demographic, parental socioeconomic status (SES), and economic contextual factors explained the majority of the male black-white (63%), male Hispanic-white (78%) and female Hispanic-white (62%) BMI gaps but less than one half of the female black-white BMI gap (44%). We found that adding the economic contextual factors increased the explained portion of the ethnic BMI gap for both female and male adolescents: the economic contextual factors explained 28% and 38% of the black-white and Hispanic-white BMI gaps for males and 13% and 8% of the black-white and Hispanic-white BMI gaps for females, respectively. Parental SES was more important in explaining the Hispanic-white BMI gap than the black-white BMI gap for both genders, whereas neighborhood economic contextual factors were more important in explaining the male BMI gap than the female BMI gap for both black-white and Hispanic-white ethnic disparities. A significantly large portion of the ethnic BMI gap, however, remained unexplained between black and white female adolescents. |
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Bibliography Citation
Powell, Lisa M., Roy Wada, Ramona C. Krauss and Youfa Wang. "Ethnic Disparities in Adolescent Body Mass Index in the United States: The Role of Parental Socioeconomic Status and Economic Contextual Factors." Social Science and Medicine 75,3 (August 2012): 469-476.
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| 2. |
Wada, Roy |
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Obesity and Physical Fitness in the Labor Market Ph.D. Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2007. DAI-A 68/03, p. 1111, Sep 2007 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT) Keyword(s): Discrimination, Sex; Gender Differences; National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES); Nutritional Status/Nutrition/Consumption Behaviors; Obesity; Wage Equations; Wage Gap Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. Mixed results have been reported when body size is used to estimate the effect of health and nutritional status on worker productivity. This dissertation offers an alternative hypothesis that body composition rather than body size is responsible for the effects of health and nutritional status on worker productivity. Body fat is responsible for the poor health associated with obesity. Lean body mass is responsible for the superior performance associated with physical fitness. Studies using body size alone cannot distinguish the combined, but opposite effects, of body fat and lean body mass. A method is provided here that overcomes the lack of data for body composition. The clinical information available in the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1988-94 (NHANES III) is used to estimate body composition for the survey participants in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY 1979). The inclusion of estimated body composition in the estimated wage equation shows that the effect of lean body mass on the wage rate is positive while the effect of body fat is negative. Estimated body composition is then used to examine the role of physical differences in the gender wage gap. The decomposition of the gender wage gap shows that most of the previously unexplained differences in wages between men and women can be attributed to the gender differences in body composition. The explanatory power of estimated body composition rises significantly with occupational physical strength requirements. This result suggests that estimated body composition is capturing occupational requirements previously omitted from the past studies. The findings presented in this dissertation indicate that body composition plays an important, though previously unidentified, role on wage determination. It is clear that capital investments in body composition yield economic dividends by impacting hourly wages of workers. Empirical studies that do not address differences in body composition risk obtaining biased results. Future public health policies should take into consideration the combined but opposite effects of body fat and lean body mass. It is not body size alone, but the compositional makeup of the human body, that public health policies may need to address. |
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Bibliography Citation
Wada, Roy. Obesity and Physical Fitness in the Labor Market. Ph.D. Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2007. DAI-A 68/03, p. 1111, Sep 2007. |
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Wada, Roy Tekin, Erdal |
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Body Composition and Wages NBER Working Paper No. 13595, National Bureau of Economic Research, November 2007. Also: http://papers.nber.org/papers/W13595 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Body Mass Index (BMI); Economics of Discrimination; Heterogeneity; National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES); Obesity; Wage Determination; Wage Models This paper examines the effect of body composition on wages. We develop measures of body composition – body fat (BF) and fat-free mass (FFM) – using data on bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) that are available in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey III and estimate wage models for respondents in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979. Our results indicate that increased body fat is unambiguously associated with decreased wages for both males and females. This result is in contrast to the mixed and sometimes inconsistent results from the previous research using body mass index (BMI). We also find new evidence indicating that a higher level of fat-free body mass is consistently associated with increased hourly wages. We present further evidence that these results are not the artifacts of unobserved heterogeneity. Our findings are robust to numerous specification checks and to a large number of alternative BIA prediction equations from which the body composition measures are derived. Our work addresses an important limitation of the current literature on the economics of obesity. Previous research relied on body weight or BMI for measuring obesity despite the growing agreement in the medical literature that they represent misleading measures of obesity because of their inability to distinguish between body fat and fat-free body mass. Body composition measures used in this paper represent significant improvements over the previously used measures because they allow for the effects of fat and fat free components of body composition to be separately identified. Our work also contributes to the growing literature on the role of non-cognitive characteristics on wage determination. |
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Bibliography Citation
Wada, Roy and Erdal Tekin. "Body Composition and Wages." NBER Working Paper No. 13595, National Bureau of Economic Research, November 2007. |
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Wada, Roy Tekin, Erdal |
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Body Composition and Wages Economics and Human Biology 8,2 (July 2010): 242-254. Also: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1570677X10000213 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: Elsevier Keyword(s): Body Mass Index (BMI); Methods/Methodology; National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES); Obesity; Wage Determination We develop measures of body composition - body fat (BF) and fat-free mass (FFM) - using data on bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) that are available in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey III and estimate wage models for respondents in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979. Previous research use body size or BMI as measures of obesity despite a growing concern that they do not distinguish between body fat and fat-free body mass or adequately control for non-homogeneity inside human body. Therefore, measures presented in this paper represent a useful alternative to BMI-based proxies of obesity. This paper also contributes to the growing literature on the role of non-cognitive factors on wage determination. Our results indicate that BF is associated with decreased wages for both males and females among whites and blacks. We also present evidence suggesting that FFM is associated with increased wages. We show that these results are not the artifacts of unobserved heterogeneity. Finally, our findings are robust to numerous specification checks and to a large number of alternative BIA prediction equations from which the body composition measures are derived. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. |
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Bibliography Citation
Wada, Roy and Erdal Tekin. "Body Composition and Wages." Economics and Human Biology 8,2 (July 2010): 242-254.
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