Overweight and Obesity and the Demand for Primary Physician Care

41 Pages Posted: 7 Apr 2009

See all articles by Nabanita Datta Gupta

Nabanita Datta Gupta

Department of Economics and Business, Aarhus University; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Jane Greve

Rockwool Foundation Research Unit

Abstract

The standard economic model for the demand for health care predicts that unhealthy behaviour such as being overweight or obese should increase the demand for medical care, particularly as clinical studies link obesity to a number of serious diseases. In this paper, we investigate whether overweight or obese individuals demand more medical care than normal weight individuals by estimating a finite mixture model which splits the population into frequent and non-frequent users of primary physician (GP) services according to the individual's latent health status. Based on a sample of wage-earners aged 25-60 years drawn from the National Health Interview (NHI) survey 2000 and merged to Danish register data, we compare differences in the impact of being overweight and obese relative to being normal weight on the demand for primary physician care. Estimated bodyweight effects vary across latent classes and show that being obese or overweight does not increase the demand for primary physician care among infrequent users but does so among frequent users.

Keywords: overweight, obesity, demand for primary physician care

JEL Classification: I12, I18

Suggested Citation

Datta Gupta, Nabanita and Greve, Jane, Overweight and Obesity and the Demand for Primary Physician Care. IZA Discussion Paper No. 4098, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1373332 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1373332

Nabanita Datta Gupta (Contact Author)

Department of Economics and Business, Aarhus University ( email )

Fuglesangs Allé 4
8210 Aarhus V
Denmark
+45 87165207 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://pure.au.dk/portal/da/ndg@econ.au.dk

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Jane Greve

Rockwool Foundation Research Unit ( email )

Sejroegade 11
DK-2100 Copenhagen
Denmark

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