You Can Spend Your Extra Income at the Health Club

Need another reason to exercise? It could help you earn more.

A new study says that:

"increased body fat is unambiguously associated with decreased wages for both males and females ... a higher level of fat-free body mass is consistently associated with increased hourly wages."

Researchers Roy Wada of the RAND Corporation and Erdal Tekin of Georgia State University say their method of measuring body fat is an improvement over the body mass index (BMI) used in older studies. BMI, they say, is a flawed measure because it can't distinguish between fat and non-fat (say, muscle) body mass. They used bioelectrical impedance analysis to determine fat body mass -- a precise measure that mirrors the difference between "overweight" and "big, but in good shape."

Economists believe that the wage difference for overweight people is primarily explained by their poorer health and lower productivity, and not discrimination. However, it can't be ruled out entirely -- other studies have found that earnings are higher for people who are taller or better looking than average, and the correlation to health and productivity for those factors is tenuous.

An abstract of the paper is here.