Does obesity have an impact on labour market outcomes in Russia? Evidence from RLMS 2006-2012

<p>This work is aimed at determining the influence of obesity on the labour market outcomes in Russia during 2006-2012 using 7 last waves of RLMS. In this work we test the relationship between probability to be employed and obesity as well as logarithm of real wages and body mass index (BMI). In both cases fixed effects are used to control for unobserved heterogeneity. In the first case, the coefficient in front of obesity is not significant neither for both men and women. The result of the regression where dependent variable is logarithm of real wages is the positive significant coefficient of BMI for men but not significant for women. The positive effect of BMI for men could be explained by increased productivity of men with extra weight in the cold climat, or by the &quot;portly banker effect&quot;, or by the wrong fat estimation by BMI. It is also important to note that the coefficient in front of self-reported health variable is significant in all regressions considered. Overall, the result of the work leads us to conclude that government should actively involve in spreading information about healthy lifestyle as people with obesity (men in particular) are able to buy food of high quality as well as to go in for sports. Therefore, the increasing number of obese/overweight people could be stopped or even reduced &nbsp;</p>