IESE Research Papers,
IESE Business School

Abstract: Obesity has risen dramatically at the same time as globalization has surged, which poses the question of whether the two are related. In this paper we document the association between type of globalization (economic, political or social) and obesity using data from 15 up to 23 different countries for up to 15 years, as well as three primary outcomes: obesity, caloric intake and grams of fat consume and a rich set of controls for micro-mechanisms. Our results are suggestive of a robust association between globalization and both obesity and calorie intake. However, once we control for micro-mechanisms suggested in the literature (e.g. food prices, female labor market participation and income), the impact of economic globalization fades away whilst ‘social globalization’ remains as a having robust and strong effect on the three measures of obesity. A one standard deviation increase in the KOF index of social globalization implies a rise of 3 percentage points in the proportion of obese population. It leads to a rise of 217 kcal and of 23.1 grams of fat consumed, respectively.

Keywords: globalization; obesity; calorie intake; health production; development; macromechanisms.

26 pages, January 8, 2013

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