Christiane BozoyanSchwer im Nachteil

About this book deutschenglish

The high portions of overweight and obese people in Germany give cause for an ongoing discussion about possible consequences for affected people and for society in general. An open question is if overweight or obese people suffer from systematic disadvantages at school or in the labor market. Do we have a weight related discrimination of overweight and obese people in Germany?

This book answers this question. It is structured in three parts. Part I introduces and discusses different measurements of overweight and obesity. The well-known body-mass index (BMI) is more and more criticized for a missing differentiation between fat free mass and fat mass. A literature review shows that more than half of the adult population in Germany suffers from overweight and obesity. Recent studies about weight discrimination come to two important conclusions: 1) there are weight specific disadvantages at school and in the labor market and 2) those disadvantages are stronger for women than for men in adulthood. Part II presents the most important discrimination theories from social psychology, sociology and economics to explain weight penalties. Part III covers three empirical studies focusing on testing weight related discrimination with the data of the German Socio-economic Panel (GSOEP). The school study examines weight discrimination during adolescence regarding grades and graduation. In the wage study it is tested if overweight and obese employees earn less than normal weight employees holding productivity factors constant. In the unemployment study it is analyzed if the duration of being jobless differs by weight.

The results of all three studies are consistent: in Germany overweight and obese people suffer from systematical disadvantages at school (especially when it comes to graduation) and in the labor market (here during the hiring process). Furthermore, it can be shown that the BMI leads to biased results for male adults. Moreover, there is a tendency that women are penalized for gaining fat mass and that men are rewarded for more fat free mass.

Ihr Werk im Verlag Dr. Kovač

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