“Behavior governing weight depends not just on health considerations but also on the desire to appear normal and attractive,” say authors Mary Burke and Frank Heiland. As a result, any change that causes average weight to increase, such as a decline in food prices, will lead to additional weight increases because the weight level considered “normal” will rise. This is an example of a “social multiplier” effect. The authors find that their integrated model, describing the effects of economic and social change on a physiologically heterogeneous population, does a better job of explaining changes in the weight distribution over the past thirty years than do models based on economic change alone.

The authors also observe that a measure of weight dissatisfaction—the gap between average actual weight and average desired weight (controlling for weight, height, age, and education) fell significantly between 1989 and 2000, despite the fact that average weights increased over the same time period.

“Some people have objected to our claim that social norms governing acceptable body weight are on the rise, on the grounds that the idealization of thinness in popular culture appears as pronounced, if not more so, than ever,” say Burke and Heiland. “While we do not dispute this last fact, we believe there is strong evidence that a gap exists between the cultural imagery and the weights that most people consider acceptable for themselves and others.”

The research points to a long-term process of social adaptation to population-wide shifts in the body size distribution. The authors believe that this adaptation occurs with a time lag, and that the response to past declines in food prices may extend well into the future.

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This study is published in Vol. 45 Issue 3 of Economic Inquiry. Media wishing to receive a PDF of this article please contact journalnews@bos.blackwellpublishing.net.

Dr. Mary Burke, currently affiliated with the Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, has been conducting economic research into the influence of social norms on behavior for 10 years, with a focus on obesity in the last three years. She can be reached for questions at mary.burke@bos.frb.org.

Dr. Frank Heiland, currently affiliated with the Department of Economics and Center for Demography and Population Health at Florida State University, has been involved in research in the fields of labor, demographic, and family economics for the past 5 years, also focusing on obesity during the past three years. He can be reached for questions at fheiland@fsu.edu.

Published since 1962, (formerly Western Economic Journal), Economic Inquiry is widely regarded as one of the top scholarly journals in its field. Besides containing research on all economics topic areas, a principal objective is to make each article understandable to economists who are not necessarily specialists in the article's topic area. For more information, please visit www.blackwellpublishing.com/ecin.

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