The relationship between income, economic freedom, and BMI

What explains increases in BMI (and obesity) over time and across countries? Although many microeconomic forces are likely explanations, increasingly scholars are arguing that macroeconomic forces such as market liberalism and globalization are root causes of the obesity epidemic. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of economic freedom on obesity conditional on the level of income and other factors.

We use an unbalanced pooled cross section of up to 135 countries for 1995 and 2000-2009.

Our statistical model specifications include pooled OLS and fixed effects.

First, we find that controlling for fixed effects siphons off much of the relationship previously documented between economic freedom and BMI. Second, economic freedom is associated with slightly higher BMIs but only for men in developing nations. Lastly, we show that economic freedom increases life expectancy for both men and women in developing countries.

Therefore, policies aimed at reducing obesity that limit economic liberalism may come at the expense of life expectancy in the developing world.