title: Fat, muscles, and wages.
abstract: Recent studies in health economics have generated two important findings: that as a measure of fatness the body mass index (BMI) is biased; and that, when it comes to analyzing wage correlates, both fat-free mass (FFM) and body fat (BF) are better suited to the task. We validate these findings for Germany using the BIAdata Base Project and the German Socio-Economic Panel. While we find no significant correlation between BMI and wages in any of our models, simple linear regression models featuring both contemporary and time-lagged fatness measures indicate that FFM and, to a lesser extent, BF are associated with hourly wages: more specifically, the relationship between FFM/BF and hourly wages is about two to three times higher for females than for males. In contrast, fixed-effects models indicate that there is no correlation between hourly wages and both FFM and BF with one exception: a significant correlation (and one in line with expectations) is found to be the rule among job changers.
authors.affiliation: LMU Munich, Institute of Sociology, Konradstraße 6, 80801 Munich, Germany. christiane.bozoyan@soziologie.uni-muenchen.de
authors.forename: Christiane
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Bozoyan
authors.forename: Tobias
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Wolbring
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001823:Body Composition / Q000502:physiology*; D015992:Body Mass Index; D005260:Female; D005858:Germany; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D016014:Linear Models; D008297:Male; D018482:Muscle, Skeletal; D009765:Obesity; D012923:Social Class