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date: 14 December 2019

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter addresses the positive and normative analysis of obesity. The social aspects of obesity may have a multiplier effect on the growth of obesity. The future of obesity depends on which of two effects on obesity that stem from income growth dominate: the more sedentary way the higher income is generated, or the larger demand for health which it induces. The principal public interventions, actual or proposed, thus far are education, taxation, fast-food regulation, and a little of everything on the model of the campaign against cigarette smoking. On a positive level, simple price changes seem to explain the overall patterns of change in diet and exercise and the resulting impact on weight. From a normative perspective, there has been little work addressing the possibility that obesity may be a private health problem rather than a public one.

Keywords: obesity, income, health, education, taxation, fast-food regulation, cigarette smoking

Tomas J. Philipson

Tomas Philpson is Daniel Levin Professor of Public Policy Studies in the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago. Philipson obtained his undergraduate degree in mathematics at Uppsala University, Sweden. He received his MA and PhD in economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Philipson has served in several public-sector positions. He served in the second Bush administration as the senior economic advisor to the head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) during 2003–2004 and subsequently as the senior economic advisor to the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in 2004-2005. He served as a senior health care advisor to Senator John McCain during his 2008 campaign for president of the United States. In December 2010, he was appointed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives to serve on the Key Indicator Commission. Philipson is the recipient of numerous international and national research awards. He has twice been the recipient of the Kenneth Arrow Award of the International Health Economics Association. In addition, he was awarded the Garfield Award by Research America in 2007, the Prêmio Haralambos Simeonidisand from the Brazilian Economic Association in 2006, and the Distinguished Economic Research Award from the Milken Institute in 2003. Philipson is a coeditor of the journal Forums for Health Economics & Policy of the Berkeley Electronic Press and is on the editorial board of the journal Health Economics and the European Journal of Health Economics. Philipson is a fellow, board member, or associate of a number of other organizations outside the University of Chicago, including the National Bureau of Economic Research, the American Enterprise Institute, the Manhattan Institute (where he is chairman of Project FDA), the Heartland Institute, the Milken Institute, and the Rand Corporation. At the University of Chicago, he is affiliated with the John M. Olin Program of Law and Economics, the George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State, the Northwestern / University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research, the Population Research Center, and the National Opinion Research Center.

Richard A. Posner

Richard A. Posner is a Judge in the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School in Chicago, Illinois.

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